Ne pas des Francias!!

[Cat Driver]

How about pilots transiting Quebec airspace should they all learn French?

[mcrit]

But depending on where you were they could either be very very friendly (Munich and Augsburg) or very arrogant (Stuttgart)...

I think the story goes something like this......

In the 70s-80s the ground controllers at Munich were notorious for having little patience with pilots. The controllers expected pilots to be familiar the aerodrome layout and to taxi with minimum delay and assistance. One day a British Airways flight (having just cleared the active and gotten clearance to the gate) was taking a bit too long to get moving, so the controller chirpped up:
"Speedbird 9015, why are you not taxiing?"
"Munich Ground, Speedbird 9015, just checking the aerodrome chart"
Controller (with irritation in his voice): "Speedbird 9015, have you not been to Munich before?"
To which the BA captain replied "Yes Sir, several times, in 1944. But this is the first time I've landed here."

[ticasse]

You are part of Canada, Canada is bilingual, then be prepared to speak French in a bilingual province or a French province. Why should Roger the PPL learn to speak English for you, when you fly in Quebec? You are the Commercial Pilot, the one earning money to fly. You should be the one doing the Professionnal Development.

I think AuxBatOn is right. How hard is it to learn the 50 or so french words frequently used in aviation ? I do not understand how an Airline Pilot or a CPL can fly in a bilingual country without being proficient in both official languages.

"ne pas des francias" that's seriously weak....I think you might be the problem.

[.......]

Non mais, ça va-tu finir un jour????

At least, if you want to talk about that issue, pleeeeaaaaase revive the old threads...

Too much is like not enough!

[AuxBatOn]

How about pilots transiting Quebec airspace should they all learn French?

If you can reasonably expect that there won't be conflicts because of language issues then no.

If you're transiting VFR and not landing at any uncontrolled airfields, there is no reason to believe there should be conflicts due to language issues.

If you're IFR, you'll be controlled for the most part, and if you do go in class G airspace IMC, there are little chances of having private pilots in that airspace. If you're in class G airspace VMC, then see the previous para. As long as you don't expect to land at an uncontrolled airfield, you should be good to go.

Now, if you're transiting (IFR/VFR) and expect to land at an uncontrolled airfield, maybe you should do your lessons and learn the few words required to understand what's going on in French.

I think that uncontrolled airfields are where the potential for language issues is the biggest because there can be quite many airplanes around said airfield and they are all in the same vicinity at close altitudes.

[. ._]

I don't see what the big deal is. Just look out the window, and if you see another plane, don't hit it.

-istp

[C-GGGQ]

Guess what....CANADA IS BILINGUAL. Quebec is not its own country, it is a province of CANADA. Which makes it a BILINGUAL PROVINCE. If Quebec wants to be its own country perfect, then we can make Canada a Non-Bilingual country and save us a lot of money. You are part of Canada, and Canada is Bilingual, so Quebec is Bilingual.

Actually you are 100% wrong. Canada is bilingual BECAUSE Quebec is solely french. The ONLY bilingual province in Canada is New Brunswick. If Quebec was legally bilingual Canada would be Legally english because EVERY province spoke it. Since Canada has one province that does not legally speak english it is therefore bilingual.

[jamesbay]

Because it's an "ICAO" standard!! Nobody is slagging the french language or culture, it's sometimes the offense that the french take, everybody across the world accepts it.

[nookie201]

Never mind QC, flown around YXU lately or other flight school trying to cash in on the booming market ?

it's tuffer locally than in QC I find.

G

[zither]

Do you guys know that there are more people in the world who speak Chinese as native language than English? What would you say if ICAO decides to force all comm to be in Chinese, for everyone, for a safety purpose?

For as long as it is "your" language that is standard in aviation, it's easy for you to complaint about another language in use. But just imagine that you need to learn Chinese...

AND...

As someone said before, it is probably only at uncontrolled airport without FSS where it can be a problem. If the other pilot doesn't understand nor speaks English, you won't be able to communicate with each other.

My main language is French, and I am able to communicate fluently in English, as most of the rest of Quebecers. And believe me, we are also often deceived by the way some people can't speak English. That is wrong, especially for professionnal pilots.

[MrWings]

What would you say if ICAO decides to force all comm to be in Chinese, for everyone, for a safety purpose?

In that hypothetical situation, then yes, we'd all have to learn Chinese.

In reality, English is the ICAO standard. So shouldn't the standard be followed?

[Cat Driver]

Hmmmm, let me think about this for a moment.

I have flown many years in Quebec.

I was the only English only speaking pilot flying in the air show circuit as an employee of " The French Flying Legends " in Europe.

Furthermore we also flew ferry flights all over the world and I can't even recall how many different languages were the language of the countries we flew in.

I am uni lingual English and never really had a problem with language anywhere on earth because the international language of aviation is English.....therefore it was not necessary for me to learn any other language to safely fly in any of the countries I flew in.

The French English arguments in Canada are political.

[zither]

You are absolutely right...

[jamesbay]

Agreed.

[Cat Driver]

I will have to archive this, there are two people in a row who agree with me on a subject as sensitive as this one.

[iflyforpie]

Make it three!

[Bush League]

Agreed.

Simply.
ICAO chose one language to be spoken in aviation. Regardless of what language they chose, the reason was to be safer. The simple reasoning was that if we can listen to and understand the chaotic chatter on the radio we can build an 'air picture' of potential conflicts in our heads. This greatly improves that magical 'situational awareness'. Which in turn helps increase the margin of safety. Just because some other countries choose to relax a bit, does not mean we should as well. Being pilots, we should all be interested in mitigating risk and increasing safety as much as possible. IF you don't agree, then do us all a favor and go hang up your hat and stay home to watch reruns of Y and R.

Now, I know that trying to regulate the use of language on the radio at the general aviation level is impossible. There is a certain amount of risk any pilot takes when flying to a small airport in a foreign country. I have to fly into Quebec frequently and unfortunately found that at the commercial level, language is a mixed bag. Some french pilots are very good and make radio calls in both languages and for that I tip my hat. Which is strange that I have to because in reality, that should just be the norm. Far too often we run into crews who choose to only speak in french. Controlled or not, if you fly commercially in Quebec and choose not to speak English while there are others in the area that do, then that is just selfish pride. To think that it's only the controllers job to be bilingual and to sort out conflicts is pure ignorance. Like everyone else I trust controllers and that's because they are 99% right. However, on the day that they are 1% wrong I want my situational awareness to have a chance to catch the error. In Canada we are very lucky that we have not had a major accident caused by relaxed language air-law. Just because we haven't, doesn't mean we wont or that the system is perfect.

So, if every commercial pilot in Canada can speak English, why cant we just use one language at our international airports? Politics unfortunately. Learning a different language for every country we commercial pilots fly too is not practical and is exactly what the ICAO standards are trying to prevent. Learning a little french when flying to small town Quebec is not the issue. That fact that I would have to learn any language to make myself safer when flying into a major airport is.

It seems in Canada we need to tip-toe around feelings when trying to tackle real problems. This shouldn't be the case. Don't hate the guy who grew up speaking the international language of aviation. If we were born Italy, we would all be more than willing to learn English so that we could fly to other countries. The fact that some people still choose pride over safety is appalling regardless of which part of the globe you are from.

[Cat Driver]

Been thinking about why there is so much emotion regarding language use in aviation in Canada yet one does not find the same problem in other countries that are French speaking like we seem to have in the Quebec culture.

Just off the top of my head I can think of nine other countries that I have flown in during my career and non of them had the same attitude about speaking French as one all to often finds in Quebec.

Why is this so?

[iflyforpie]

But depending on where you were they could either be very very friendly (Munich and Augsburg) or very arrogant (Stuttgart)...

I think the story goes something like this......

In the 70s-80s the ground controllers at Munich were notorious for having little patience with pilots. The controllers expected pilots to be familiar the aerodrome layout and to taxi with minimum delay and assistance. One day a British Airways flight (having just cleared the active and gotten clearance to the gate) was taking a bit too long to get moving, so the controller chirpped up:
"Speedbird 9015, why are you not taxiing?"
"Munich Ground, Speedbird 9015, just checking the aerodrome chart"
Controller (with irritation in his voice): "Speedbird 9015, have you not been to Munich before?"
To which the BA captain replied "Yes Sir, several times, in 1944. But this is the first time I've landed here."

I was a Pan Am 727 Flight Engineer waiting for start clearance in Munich, Germany. I was listening to the radio since I was the junior crew member.
This was the conversation I overheard: (I don't recall call signs any longer)
Lufthansa: (In German) "Ground, what is our start clearance time?"
Ground: (In English) "If you want an answer you must speak English."
Luft: (In English) "I am a German, flying a German airplane, in Germany. Why must I speak English?"
Beautiful English Accent: (before ground could answer) "Because you lost the bloody war!"

[Mustang06]

I think everybody should make an effort and speak a second language.

Je pense que tout le monde doit faire un effort et parler une deuxième langue.

Yo pienso que todo el mondo debería hacer un esfuerzo y hablar otro idioma

Capishi?
Muito brigado voce!

[navajo]

I'm a frenchie from Quebec and I fully agree with Cat Driver, Bush League, etc.... but for commercial pilots only, there's not politics in the fact that Joe the pilot who don't speak english has the right to fly in Quebec. It's probably hard for english to understand but for a frenchie , it's just common sense!

[Cat Driver]

I have worked in a lot of areas in Quebec where there are mainly french speaking people places such as Matagami, Chibougamau, Roberval I never had any problem with the people and the language because they always were very helpful and did not look down on me because I did not speak French.

That was many years ago back in the early sixties so maybe things have changed, but I very much doubt that it would be any different today.

[jeta1]

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[RenegadeAV8R]

+1

I know this has been discussed before however,

I wonder if in the USA they have Jep plates / charts in Spanish? Why we have CFS's and CAP's in French boggles the mind. I know its Canada and we have 2 official languages but really.

Actually, there is no french CFS. There is a bilingual CFS that has a french section that only covers the airports from the province of Québec, Ottawa and St-Pierre, France. And I still remember that up to a few years ago, in the CFS, there was an airport at St-Pierre et Miquelon, France that had a mention that said "Communication in french only" (that was for the airport in the France country).

There is only one CAP that is available in french, it is CAP 6 which covers the province of Québec, CAP 5 covers the province of Québec in english.

French over the air in the province of Québec, and the bilingual version of the CFS came into effect in the '70.


RenegadeAV8R

[jeta1]

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