These Amendments make clear and extend language requirements. So in March 2003 ICAO adopted Amendments to ICAO Annexes 1, 6, 10 and 11. The two aircraft met on the active runway, with heavy loss of lives.īetween 1976-2000 more than 1100 passengers and crews lost their lives in accidents in which language played a contributory role.Ĭoncern over the role of language in airline accidents brought real actions. At the same time KLM 747 initiated a shrouded take off on the opposite direction. The crew of Pan American 747 missed or misunderstood taxi instructions requiring a turn off the active runway. For example, the worst disaster in aviation history occurred in 1977 when two Boeings 747 collided at Tenerife, Canary Islands. Insufficient English language proficiency often results in accidents and incidents. The progress in safety is achieved by intensive efforts in various spheres – engineering sciences, meteorology, psychology, medicine, economics and “last but not least” the English language. The most urgent problem in aviation is safety. For this purpose ICAO has a special “Language and Publications Branch” with four sections. But all meetings, conferences and assemblies are conducted in English and then all materials are translated into other languages. There are four working languages in ICAO – English, French, Spanish and Russian. At present English is the language of business, technology, sport and aviation. These characteristics are: simplicity of forms (very few endings) flexibility (the same word can operate as some different parts of speech) openness of vocabulary (English words are frequently admitted by other languages). Besides, basic characteristics of English also contribute to the situation that nowadays it is the most spread language on Earth. Above all, the great growth of population in the United States together with massive immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has given the English language its present standing in the world. This exporting of English began in the XVII-th century, with the first settlements in North America. INTERNATIONAL CIVIL AVIATION ORGANIZATIONS 11ĪERONAUTICAL INFORMATION SERVICES (AIS) 15

Planeplotter ground station