July 26, 2007:
Most air controllers in the world
use English as a common language. America and its allies also use English as a common language
for military air traffic control. But military pilots, unlike commercial
pilots, rarely get to use airbases run by foreigners. For flight operations at
their own bases, they use their native language. So the English skills of many
foreign pilots are not all they should be. This was discovered anew this
Summer, when the U.S. Air Force hosted a Red Flag training exercise in Alaska.
Red Flag uses experienced pilots, trained to
operate as potential enemies would, in addition to lots of live fire and air
combat exercises. Pilots from Japan, Spain and Turkey had to use an American
air base, and U.S. air traffic controllers. It became real obvious, real soon,
that the English skills of most foreign pilots was not very good. The most
common phrase heard on the radio during the exercises was "say
again?"
The Turks were the best, largely because many of
them have used American run air bases before. While a pain to deal with,
everyone left the exercise with some very vivid memories of how important good
language skills are. Better to find it out during a training exercise, than
when there's a shooting war going on.