Regulating to improve safety in aviation

Accident investigations revealed it was the use of non-standard phraseology and inadequate proficiency in plain language which were contributing factors in a significant number of aircraft accidents and incidents. As a result, ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation), the United Nations regulatory aviation agency with 192 member States, based in Montreal, which legislates on every aspect of commercial aviation operations, set in motion a process to study how the level of radio communication could be improved and implement the necessary measures.

In 2000, ICAO formed the Proficiency Requirements in Common English Study Group (PRICESG) made up of an international panel of operational and linguistic experts in order to examine the use of English in aviation and make recommendations for regulating it.

In 2003, the ICAO Council approved new Standards and Recommended Practices with respect to Language Proficiency Requirements (LPR) comprising a six-level rating scale and holistic descriptors, defining a minimum Operational Level (Level 4) and establishing the requirement for all pilots and controllers to demonstrate their language proficiency and have their licenses endorsed, with the recommendation of periodic re-testing for all those below Level 6. These requirements were scheduled to come into effect in March 2008.

In 2004, the Manual on the Implementation of ICAO Language Proficiency Requirements (Document 9835) was published and the first ICAO Aviation Language Symposium was held in Montreal. In 2005, the PRICESG linguistic sub-group met to work on and calibrate recorded speech samples, develop rating rationales and develop a rating tool entitled the ICAO Language Proficiency Requirement Speech Sample Training Aid CD. Over the last four years ICAO has conducted numerous regional seminars to explain the requirements and support the member States in implementing them.

In 2007, a second ICAO Aviation Language Symposium was held and the ICAO Assembly passed a resolution (A36-11) granting the 192 member States the possibility of an additional three-year period to reach compliance - i.e. to make sure that all their international pilots and air traffic controllers handling international flights had reached Level 4 - provided they filed a detailed implementation plan on how this was to be achieved and what contingency measures were being taken in order to ensure safety in the interim period.

In 2008, ICAO will publish guidance material in the form of circulars for the language and aviation communities on criteria about how to assess compliant aviation English testing and aviation English training systems with a view to encouraging the community to regulate itself in these two areas.

The concern which has driven all these measures is to improve safety in what is already a statistically very safe form of transport. ICAO does not possess the internal means or expertise to produce an aviation English test; nor is this part of its mandate. It is however in the process of providing guidelines on the nature of appropriate testing to be published in a circular in 2008.

These standards represent the world's first language testing policy affecting a whole industry, and naturally present a very complex set of consequences and requirements.

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