*VASAviation's opinion* It's mandatory to stress that 90% of these traffics were coming inbound Cali from Bogota where they had been holding and finally ended up diverting due to poor weather there. Apparently all those airplanes had Cali as their alternate airport and they all were instructed to proceed seeing that weather was not going to improve any time soon. In my opinion 1- the sequence from Bogota to Cali was very bad organized and many airplanes ended up reaching MANGA at almost the same time with no functional space for Cali ATC to play with them and build an arrival sequence. 2- Cali airspace is really complicated and no vectors can be given having to clear every single aircraft to a published procedure (either arrival STAR or approach). This makes the task difficult for the controller who has limited tools to organize and build the approach sequences. Way more difficult than vectoring the sequence having the opportunity to build it manually creating a queue for the localizer. 3- One controller seems not to be enough for this huge airspace and this massive shower of arrivals. Maybe a split into two sectors (higher and lower) would have helped decreasing the workload of the lady approacher. 4- Language barrier made it all the even more difficult. The lady starts getting stressed and the situation definitely surpasses her. 5- Some pilots started to become a little impatient asking for their EAT knowing that the ATC was extremely busy at that time. That definitely got her more nervous. Leave your opinions here!
Doesn't Heathrow (other busy locations may do it too but..) seperate their 3D airspace the same as they do their 2D airspace? With the benefit of hindsight (and RU-vid armchart expertise), creating and additional approch aerodrome /holding pattern may have helped here.. Approch - 20k feet holding --> Final approch
Dunno about structure of airspace over Cali, but! If u don't have any space to deal with traffic or/and if there are too many airplanes under your control, you may close your air space. The adjacent ATC unit must help and keep airplanes until situation get easier. That's how it works. Obviously, controller was not ready for such traffic flow. She should lower airplanes faster. Not one flight level by one. Use vertical speed, give instructions to maintain same rate of descent and get planes low.
AVIA09209 such a wise guy! "Give priority to that Lufthansa (...), he can't understand you and isn't familiar with the airport and doesn't know what to do", kudos!
He wasn't being a wise guy, he was genuinely concerned for his German colleagues, undoubtedly having been in a similar situation himself at some point. He knew how stressful things were in the LH cockpit, and he wanted to offer what assistance he could. Truly an honorable act.
@@pirahna432 Communication issues abound. I think "wise guy" here is meant as "guy showing or having wisdom" rather than "being an asshole" which is what it usually means in western countries. I think we're all agreed that the Avianca pilots were great here.
Wow the other pilots helping Lufthansa and also translating back to spanish for the controller is super nice in a stressful situation like this. Also the offer to give priority to them is really cool!!!
@@sugarhoneyicedtea5872 she does, but she was stressed to her limits, you can hear that. Maybe someone shouldn't judge too early, specially when English ain't her first language obviously. Yes it was very dangerous, but she tried her best, pretty sure about that.
@@Rob2 That's a good point. I know a fair amount of Spanish, not fluent, but when I need to speak it I can't just switch back and forth. I really have to focus.
R Johnson well not necessarily - I remember another vasa recording, with one aircraft in emergency and another pilot complained for the runway closure “dammit”. It’s down to the individual
It could be that she's ignoring them, or it could be that she's simply overwhelmed and can't handle speaking a second language while directing a sudden influx of airplanes. That's too many planes for one controller.
It is very often done by controllers from south-west countries. Sometimes you should call them multiple times even when it is clear that they hear you...
Standby was given often as a response, but not always. Numerous planes were trying to get further instructions at the same time. I think it would have been wise to issue blanket instructions on the radio informing all planes in the area of the plan in place to handle this spike in traffic, where the holding patterns were likely to be so they can all prepare and understand the situation that ATC are trying to deal with.
Freighter not in all countries as far as i know here in Chile the controllers have a very good english and the y never have problems with english speaking traffic
Hi , I am an ATC working at Dubai Intl approach, and have to say once I heard this: No one more to blame than the watch supervisor of this shift, the weather at Bogota didn’t appear just in a sudden, he’s the one should be monitoring the weather at BOG and prepare for what was coming to his crew. On the contrary, he let this poor girl battle totally unprepared and with a level 2 aviation English for so much time. Unbelievable!!!!!!
Exactly, this is completely unacceptabkle for an international airport - as is the Spanish language on the radio. If I was to decide i'd stop LH flights to destinations like this. This is a real safety issue.
Is too easy to Monday night quarterback this ATC concerning English proficiency. When confronted with stress speaking in your native language becomes a default response. Not this ATC could not speak and understand English. I got into a heated argument on a busy highway in Kuwait. The other driver was yelling at me in Arabic. I was telling in English. We other understood each other and the other driver could speak English fluently and my Arabic at conversational level. We just responded to our stressed induced default of our native languages. Happens....all unpredictable "X" Factor.
@@byronharano2391not really. Where does this happen? I live in America, where many speak a native language that is not English, and this is never a problem there.
Can only imagine how stressful it must've been for the LH pilots, hearing only gibberish missing out on a ton of SA regarding the location of other planes and holds. The flood of comms and the ATC taking her time acknowledgeing the lack of MANGA wp... They were basically flying blind in a swarm of planes helped by TCAS... Props to other pilots for trying to help. Why didn't they rush some help for the ATC as soon as the other airport directed that many planes towards Cali? She was clearly overwhelmed and did her best.
I see a multitude of issues here: 1. Controller was clearly overloaded. Working more planes than she had the capacity to handle. 2. Language barriers. Spanish is the primary language in that area, however English is the international language used in aviation. I suspect the controller wasn’t as well versed as she should of been in the English language to prepare her for dealing with foreign pilots who would likely use English over Spanish to communicate. 3. She missed several call from DHL. Thankfully the other pilots were aware of this and attempted to relay these messages to the ATC controller. They also picked up on the fact the pilot may of not been familiar with the area, and request he be allowed in first. This was a beautiful example of professionalism between the pilots in the air working together.
Yes agree, by not speaking in English it compounded the situation because pilots who don't speak Spanish will not know what is happening with the aircraft around them.
What a cluster. I speak a little Spanish, and while I could understand what a few of the pilots were saying, ATC was basically impossible for me to understand. ATC apparently couldn't understand what Lufthansa said in English, so it's just a disaster waiting to happen.
I speak English and Spanish, but I couldn't understand what she was saying for the Colombians or the Germans. She was speaking fast and mixing up her words.
I speak english and spanish fluently and I've flown into Cali several times. Most of the time I've been able to clearly understand what the ATC has said in either spanish or english, even though my spanish dialect is mexican since that's where I learned spanish. However, I found her difficult to understand and it was pretty clear she wasn't comfortably fluent enough in English to be the controller is this situation. These types of situations are exactly why only one language should be spoken by commercial pilots and ATCs. This would have likely been a clusterfuck anyways, but the language barrier made it an incredibly dangerous clusterfuck.
Excellent work from avianca pilot stressing to atc that Lufthansa pilot was in unfamiliar territory and struggling to understand the heavily accented ATC instructions. Very good attitude to have towards fellow pilots 👌
It's understandable that there was a lot going on and ATC might not have been used to that much traffic at once (the poor sequencing and complex airspace did not help). However, it is clear that she was overwhelmed with the amount of airplanes. In my opinion it was her responsibility to realize it was too much for her to handle safely and should have asked for help. Poor judgment of the situation and her capabilities by the controller, which resulted in a very dangerous situation.
Fsx Profis Well said, I constantly advised my fellow workers that it was not a sign of weakness to ask for help, but a sign of maturity and professionalism. Get the flights down safely, then we can discuss the matter, perhaps come up with better ideas.
Did she have time to realize that she was overload? It’s unusual situation for this controller and she did everything that she could. Bad organization. Where was supervisor?
this idea of using local languages at major airports with flights from around the world isnt a good idea at all!!! International aviation bodies should change this!
The issue is that the controller is able to speak in their native tongue much more quickly and efficiently. English is the ICAO standard but when the majority of planes speak Spanish wouldn't it make sense for the controller to speak Spanish for the planes that understand it and only switch to English for the planes that require it? Especially in the high workload environment it would be much more difficult for the controller to speak in English for all planes. It was quite obvious that the controller wasn't 100% fluent in English, which she probably did not have to practice often for a more local airport like Cali, so imagine what would happen if she had to speak English for all planes! I'm not saying that it's not her fault in at least some aspect, all IK'm saying is that there is a reason for not speaking in English all the time.
@@computercraze7201 I understand what youre saying but simetimes i think if youre going to decide to venture into this aviation stuff which can easily end up peoples lives because of small things like not speaking english, it should be your obligation to learn how to speak fluent english and not risk peoples lives because of such simple things
@@HeaanLasai Exactly. It's insane to speak in your local language when you have non-speakers on the frequency. They will not understand anything that is said. This should be illegal.
At 23,000 feet with altimeter 29.92 inHg and temperature 20C, at MSL, 200 KIAS would be 317 TAS. If the calculator I used is to be believed. So he's probably close to his minimum clean speed.
Great upload, as usual. Thank you! Wow...what a total mess!! It’s plain dangerous to not use English in busy airspace like that with international arrivals. The female controller’s English is simply inadequate and her instructions are unclear. It’s a set-up for disaster (in addition to being task-saturated). Scary!!
In South America Spanish is the main language. Using English instead would make it more dangerous since the majority of Latinamerican pilots would not understand.
@@thomasdahl3083 Even so, I thought it was decided worldwide that English was to be used as the main language in aviation, with a few changes to words like nine and five, so inadequate proficiency in English should not be allowed in my opinion. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
Max Verbruggen Spanish, French, Chinese (Mandarin), Russian & Arabic are official ICAO languages, therefore the ATC controller does not have to speak English. Although it would be a lot easier to handle international traffic that way... pilots flying to Latin American countries should also know basic Spanish aviation phrases... it’s not that hard tbh. Although English is the most popular language worldwide the importance of other ICAO languages is rising worldwide (especially Spanish). The world is becoming more multilingual each and every day...maybe a pilot has to know more than just English in a couple of years...
@@marclp2612 good to know, thanks for the info! I would still imagine having one worldwide language would be easiest to manage, instead of knowing phraseology in 6 different languages. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.
Max Verbruggen No, I totally agree but I guess that’s just how it is in some countries... especially in China or Russia some ATC controllers don’t even know basic Aviation phrases in English. I guess it has something to do with politics (patriotism/nationalism etc) and the national school system, so that‘s why there‘s more than one official ICAO language.
I'm a controller in the U.S. (enroute) and disagree this was anywhere near "chaos," nor was the Lufthansa situation a "serious close call." The ICAO ATC system (followed in 99% of the world including Columbia) is designed for frequency congestion, misheard communications, language barriers etc, basically everything you see here. This kind of arrival holding setup is actually low workload for a controller (despite looking "chaotic" on radar) because she's using a mix of procedural (non-radar) control and only scanning the radar for holding pattern spillouts (like the Lufthansa she quickly detects) and altitude reports. She's got everyone altitude separated, everyone on published routes and pretty soon established in published and procedurally separated holding patterns. Her only workload is answering the radio and clearing in the bottom of the arrival stack one-by-one. No hurries. That's why she's not flustered, tells people good evening and to "go ahead", describes at length what's going on, etc. It's because everybody's separated*. *Yes except for the Lufthansa, who she clearly thought had holding instructions at MANGA (as she described later). The video starts after the Lufthansa had checked in and presumably been given the hold instructions or not, so we don't know who's to blame here. If they had held at MANGA, everybody in the sector would have been properly separated. Okay, so they weren't, mistakes happen (her's or the pilot's) and that's why there are about seven layers of redundancy that all have to fail. Here the controller's radar scan caught the lack of Lufthansa's hold and quickly established separation (by the way, 5-6 miles is not at all "close" when aircraft on on different routes -- we routinely run them 3-5 miles apart). Unfortunately, routine incidents like this sometimes get leaked, and the non-ATC-understanding press and public make a big deal out of it because it sounds dramatic especially when routine situations like this don't get leaked much. Just my informed opinion (27 years in the FAA).
@Stefano Dias- I agree. The language barrier is like one reason she did "not hear" comms from the Lufthansa flight. Potentially dangerous, but I've seen worse. She was obviously effective in reducing the stack.
kewkabe, what is your opinion on ATC speaking local language with international traffic? Doesn't that affect the situational awareness of everyone that does not speak the local language (spanish in this case)?
@@tomasgomez3465 So maybe realizing that there are too many diversions coming in and asking for additional ATC to help or to close the approach for further arrivals would have helped here. Not even talking about the language barrier - if the Lufthansa could understand that there are others cleared for holding over MANGA they could've start looking for it and proactively tell ATC that it could not be found. But with all that Spanish you cannot tell which one of the words is the waypoint if you don't speak that language.
River H that's the last thing they need. NY controllers are generally examples of how not to do it. Too much slang, too much attitude, too much variation in practice
Condensing the Tenerife airport disaster, the largest disaster in aviation history, the investigation of the accident concluded the importance of using standardized phraseology in radio communications. You cannot have standardize phraseology if everyone does not use the same language. In many instances there is no direct translation between languages. The International Civil Aviation Organization decreed that from January 1, 2008 all air traffic controllers and flight crew members engaged in or in contact with international flights must be proficient in the English language as a general spoken medium and not simply have a proficiency in standard ICAO radio phraseology. It goes on to state that those who do not have proficiency must acquire it by that date or be removed from international flight routes. That decree also goes on to explain in detail how air traffic controller‘s are certified to that respect. In other words, it's very specific. That said....ATC's SOP in this airspace is much less than desired and I am sure this incident will be further looked into. Lufthansa is a quality carrier and they expect as much from ATC so I am quite sure their people will get to the bottom of this through the proper channels.
i dont really see a problem in using Spanish if that´s the language of the pilots as well, however she clearly failed to switch to English when it was required.
@223 Remington if both are talking English despite having Spanish as Native language, other international pilots can understand what they are saying and also can avoid such situations (pilot from Lufthansa could hear that Avianca is on same FL). Furthermore, it gives practice and you can improve over time. I am quadri-lingual and I find it better to keep speaking one language than switching within seconds in a stressful situation. You need more time to find your words if you are switching from your native language.
All European countries now use only English in ATC communication - with exception of France, Spain and Russia. But even Spain is now trying hard to switch to English. So German ATC in Frankfurt speaks English with German pilots, or here in Prague, local ATC speaks only English with Czech pilots. Sometimes it is real struggle due to all different accents, but it works in the end, despite very congested airspace here in central Europe.
@Parallax There is a video from Warsaw somewhere on this channel. The atc guy switches smoothly and seemlessly between polish and english and everybody is fine. I agree that a ATC person in "danger" of meeting international traffic should ALSO speak english. I think nobody disagrees that this here was a good example of how not to do things. But every local airport in the world only handling things in english is unrealistic and unnecessary.
hey there, im from colombia. good vid as always, thx for posting this. the news here have manipulated the information and haven´t even post a realible video. your vid helps a lot with understanding the situation.
Jorge is it common to see deaths in local ATC zones over language issues? German is not like Spanish in many respects and the Germans want to speak English which is another issue entirely.
Never good when the pilots are telling the controllers how they should be conducting their business, as is the case with the pilots saying that the controller should be helping out the Lufthansa, who is obviously confused as to where to go and what to do.
Even worst that she tired to make excuses for not talking to them. English is the language of aviation and the tower should have had someone there who is proficient in it. You know you have problems when other pilots have to do their job for them. This was a very very dangerous situation.
When the aviation community helps each other out it is heartwarming. That poor ATC controller was overwhelmed, pilots want to land their planes safely, and to see their fellow aviators do the same..helping each out of difficulty is what comms exist for. Well done.
Another video (audio) that highlights the need to use English in commercial aviation so everyone can know what is going on. All ATCs should be required to know English well as well as all ATPL holders. And I would say that even for CPL pilot should know English well enough. I do not quite understand why English is not used by default by pilots/ATCs in so many places. It is okay to use local language for general aviation, though even then I prefer English so others know what I am up to.
I do agree with the language being English for ATC. But I also think that pilots, if traveling international. Should know some ATC phraseology in the language of their destination. This old antiquated way of thinking of you should speak the language I speak and I refuse to learn anything else is not helping anybody. We could be safer in the air if we all commit to one language and have something as back-up. Just like all of our aircraft have a back-up for an important system.
@@alexgonzalez4013 this has nothing to do with "you should speak the language i speak". i am german and also think english should be spoken everywhere in commercial aviation. if you want to make everyone speak the same language you will need to agree on one and english just is the most obvious choice. i do like your thought though to know basic phraseology of the destinations language...
Alex Gonzalez if your method was implemented then LHR based BA 777 pilots would need to understand basic ATC in at least 53 languages! Any ATC handling international traffic should be using the standard language, English. All commercial, international pilots know the language so it should always be primary...
Poor communications between Cali ATC and planes have already been involved in a crash. Lessons should have been learnt from that... What a pity this airport has only elvolved with its radar but not ATC procedures. Of course this was a massive and probably unexpected rush for Cali, and as one pilot asked, help should have been given to this poor ATC. At some point, there is a male voice giving instructions to planes, some pilots repeating instructions for other pilots, all that is very confusing. This should be reviewd by Cali authorities for training and improvement purposes.The name of this video is well chosen though.
English should be the standard and only language for COMERCIAL aviation, lack of situational awareness and understanding is very clear in this case, making an already stressful situation a potential safety issue, even leading to an accident.
You are right. Only english should be used to speak to ATC. Proper spelling must also be adhered to. By the way, this is the proper way to spell COMMERCIAL.
Wow, that was a really bad performance by the controller. She definitely should take another 1-2 year training courses or otherwise be fired. It's unbelievable that she 1. ignored the Lufthansa aircraft and then didn't realize that there's another aircraft on the same altitude. Her English was as bad as her commands. Someone with such a bad English could never become an ATC in Germany. Those pilots react really professional and nice.
iJumpster Exactly because she was clearly unable to control those airplanes but I know that this job is really stressful and difficult. The pilots did a good job!
And once again, the ICAO Assembly should legislate that under IFR the only applicable, common language must be English, without any exclusions. It is a serious disadvantage in terms of Situational Awareness (SA) and therefore a potential danger to use Spanish, Russian or Chinese in radio communications with ATC.
As a western European it is always insanely baffeling to me that IFR traffic is not controlled in english by default. In Germany VFR traffic is the only traffic that may be controlled in German. For all IFR traffic it is mandatory to control them in English in order to maintain and increase situational awareness for the majority of traffic. DLH is virtually flying blind in this clip. All they have is there PFD, MFD and MCDU; no eyes no ears. Now, to be fair, I don't know this airport but I assume they don't experience that much traffic usually and this shower of planes was massively unexpected for her. Now the tone with which the Avianca guy spoke was harsh but more than understandable. I am a little sorry for her to have her skills talked down this way but the way she reacted to the criticism (by saying Tx were blocked which clearly wasn't true) isn't exactly good either. I'm don't wanna bash on her but I am more than glad and highly appreciate those pilots spoke up and did whatever little they could to be of aid.
Exactly the same thoughts here. When pilots cannot understand 90% of comms, it's incredibly dangerous. Even countries like Japan which are very poor in English generally do a great job at this.
To be fair to ATC in Cali I doubt the airport has ever been that busy. The controller might not have been able to get help simply because there is no other frequency available. The Centre in Bogota should have done more to plan the traffic. They just seemed to dump it on all Cali Approach. Very poor teamwork In my opinion.
I get that this was a stressfull situation and that she was probably in over her head - and she did well to first sacrifice the non-safety related features (like telling the pilots to stick it with their ETA requests). But her aviation english needs desperate work. She's hardly readable in spanish, in english it's suuuuper hard to make out anything. Don't blame Lufthansa for getting angry one bit.
They are running up against established fuel minimums. If Cali can't get them down in time, they have to try to divert to a different airport or declare a PAN PAN PAN fuel emergency. They are trying to avoid creating a fuel emergency. They aren't being selfish.
John Ferguson Of course I know they have some requirements but at 6:00 you can clearly see that they ask their ETA because the others asked too. And this was not very clever. But i mean yes if you only have 40 min of fuel left of course you ask the ETA, that was just at 6:00 too much for only one controller
John Ferguson any pilot who is worth his pay has one ear outside his plane. He would know the sector was up for grabs and only interject when absolutely necessary. He would also know already how much holding fuel he had after already diverting from the primary, and since that would determine how long he would ultimately be able to hold before having to declare a fuel emergency he would consider that time his EFC. he would then keep his mouth shut and let the controller get the sector under control, and then receive the lower priority message and compare that with his number. He would only interrupt the controller if he had not received any EFC AND he was approaching his max time. In my 30 years I've never seen a plane depart a fix because his EFC time was reached. I have held without issuing an EFC time because both the pilot and I knew further clearance would not come. I have asked for and received maximum holding times and then just made that the EFC. I have on far more occasions than I wish to remember issued EFC times and updated (read pushed back) those times repeatedly.
Wow incredible what just happened there. First of all it shows again that ATC should speak clearer English and should talk English to all aircraft on frequency. It was also quite nice to see other pilots helping out the lufthansa and even telling the ATC to speak more clear and to give priority to the LH plane since they are unfamiliar and come from far away. Great stuff by all the pilots involves, not so great job by the ATC.
Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable. There are several things so unbelievably wrong with this: 1. BE ABLE TO SPEAK ENGLISH. I don't care if most of the time you only have spanish flights, SPEAK ENGLISH ON AN APPROPIATE LEVEL FOR YOUR JOB. Otherwise, you are not the right person to do this job. It's that simple. SAFETY CAN NOT BE NEGOTIATED and it became blatantly obvious when other pilots had to translate because of the controller's incompetence. 2. SPEAK ENGLISH. Either there are international flights in the airspace and it creates situational awareness for everyone or there aren't but you can practice your english so you don't have a language problem in a high stress situation with international flights. Either way, speak english! 3. Controllers are the boss of their airspace, not the pilots. Act accordingly. Make the horde of pilots shut up if you're too busy for their ETA shit and concentrate on getting everyone down safely. I am going to be a german pilot myself soon and this video sends shivers down my spine. Because english is not my native language, I had to spend years of effort to learn it and everyone not willing to do the same should not be pilot or air traffic controller. There are many other jobs out there not requiring a fluent level of english. Go do them, there's no shame in it.
@@javiergarrido6088 even German is, AFAIK. I agree with Felix, but he should know about BZF II ... VFR flights with communications in German, in Germany. However, IFR in Germany is supposed to be conducted exclusively in English. Also, ATC is the advisor, not the boss. However, if you don't follow their advice and create a dangerous situation, you'll have to answer some rather pointed questions.
While I agree with the importance of knowing and speaking English in the case of the atc, let me say that if you are going to become a pilot, one of the first things that you learn is to review your charts and route. manga is a fix, that is basically the most used fix to enter Cali when you are flying from bogota. In my opinion the controller has the same fault in her bad English, as the Lufthansa pilot in not knowing where was manga and even saying that it wasn’t in the data base.
@@shoryworld I see your point. Maybe it should be investigated why the fix was not in the database, on a plane that was scheduled to fly in that area. I assume the fix is not that new, so the database should have it, if it was reasonably up to date. I haven't seen the charts for the area, but a fix should easy to find on the chart. Maybe the pilots were taken by surprise as much as ATC and were just setting up the holding (that might also explain the question for the inbound course...).
WOW great airmanship by Avianca! Good job guys for helping lufthansa flying in from far!Shame on that female controller, get a new job and leave ATC role for those who can handle the pressure!
Just a note with the audio - depending on where the receiver is as well as other aircraft transmitting what comes across clear to us may well be a blocked transmission for the other guy. It seems like she ignores some aircraft but they may well be being blocked but we can't hear it. Sounds like all crews handled this shitshow well and everyone was looking out for each other.
This should make anyone afraid of flying. With so much traffic in an airport that's not used to it, automation would do much better. Humans get overwhelmed in such conditions.
This is what we call, "getting snowed under ", one step before losing the picture. We do not know what coordination or planning was done between Bogota and Cali. When the controller knew of the inbound diverts, a plan should have been made. For example, Send 7 to TULUA VOR, and hold. 3 routed via the MANGA 1 arrival to intercept the arc for Rwy 01 ILS Appch. 3 sent to the hold over CLO. (13 aircraft inbound at the start). Radar was operational, could have been used for vectoring. What is their fuel status at present? As we heard the pilots requesting an EAT time, they were getting concerned, pilots like to have this info ASAP. The controller was behind the power curve. Communicating and working out this situation, was now beyond the controllers capabilities.
Vectoring is unavailable in Cali airspace. You need to follow the routes quite precisely. Sure you could hold anywhere at FL230 when the mountain reach only to 18000, but it's not operationally safer. It made quite sense to stack the aircrafts atop each other, it would just have been better if they held most of them further away and sent them inbound at reduced pace.
i think her english was acceptable,i have heard worse in europe but here i think here language barrier was not the biggest issue but rather the quick diversion.
English, French and Spanish are the official ICAO languages. But English is expected to be spoken everywhere as a common ground. This incident is a great example that the quality of English to be expected is a different topic...
There is clearly a problem here. It starts with the language barrier. Cali is not such a busy airport despite its long runway only recieves around two heavies a day and not when it is this busy. In my opinión more airplanes could have diverted to nearby Medellín José María Córdoba international airport (SKRG) as this airport is bigger and more busy and thus better trained controllers. Not only that but Cali is not in a very easy zone to fly with no clear vectors to the runway and thus making the pattern work for the controller even harder. Maybe better patterning from Bogotá Atc would have helped. On the other side thumbs up to the pilots of Avianca and Ocean Air who helped the LH a346. I dont understand how the LH crew did not see MANGA wpt when they had it even spelled for them by ATC though
Thank the stars for TCAS. Bogota dropped the ball sending all these planes in at once rather than one at a time. Cali is neither used to nor equipped to deal with this many planes at once with just one controller on duty.
Avianca crew has figured it out and provided solution! Give priority to the airplane unfamiliar with the area/airspace and doesn't speak the native language! That resolves the issues way quicker than anything else!
Two things, the Oceanair flight was the Avianca Brazil one, and again, as a Brazilian/South American those lack of English skills from ATCs terrifies me the hell!! Flying through South America sometimes can be painful because of communication. And communication can lead to serious problems for pilots!
Quite dysfunctional radar facility. I would hope that they would split the airspace to reduce the workload on the controller. In addition, the controller on-duty didn't seem competent. Not trying to be mean, but that's no excuse for an almost conflict.
This is the aviation equivalent of a traffic backup on your busiest section of the interstates during rush hour, and the ATC is like a traffic management supervisor who is completely overwhelmed at the moment by what her cameras are telling her. The part that scares me the most is that her command of English in this situation would normally have her pulled from Duty in a lighter traffic situation. Someone please correct me I'm wrong but don't controllers have to be fluent not only in their native language but also in English in order to hold a controller position since the same rule applies for Pilots
I am sorry but he called her inumerous times and she gave instructions to other fights that arrived at the airspace later and ignored him. Painful to hear.
The ATC at Cali isnt entirely to blame, the controllers in SKBO shouldnt have sent that massive amount of traffic to SKCL like that considering the airport is in a valley, surrounded by terrain only has one runway.. dont know how was the weather in other airports but perhaps SKCL cant be the only suitable alternate of SKBO... ATC was overwhelmed and clearly did not know how to handle the volume of traffic.
Ruben Villanueva • If I may clarify, this could have been a disaster with large loss of human life. Not sure what you mean by “review” Tenerife, but I can tell you then, I remember it as the worst aviation accident until that time; and it STILL is.
gomphrena Yes, it was the worst of all. I meant, the accident report, did not assign any blame as to the language used, but they did cite incorrect phraseology used by the controller. Main blame was on the KLM pilot, for starting his takeoff without controllers clearance to do so. The tapes, revealed that the KLM copilot and flight engineer, questioned if they had received clearance. But, the Captain continued his flight into disaster.
Ruben Villanueva Yes and I’m really glad the concept of CRM sort of came into being after that; meaning, junior officers would be more inclined to intervene in a rapidly devolving situation.
She doesn't even acknowledge Lufthansa at the end, after she was told that there is a communication issue in Spanish by all other pilots. She should not be working this job. Seriously scary how she is aware Lufthansa doesn't understand her, has no idea where he’s flying and he said he couldn’t find MANGA, but just ignores it
I think procedures should be improved by the Colombian Aviation Organization, because that stressed controllers, pilots and everybody. Also, I think the Lufthansa didn't understand MANGA holding name, but fortunately he found it at the end. About the language, we cant expect pilots to speak Spanish, Portuguese, English, Chinese and 1000 languages.
Situations like this are why it's critical that *all* ATCOs be able to speak English fluently... and that they do that when foreign aircraft are on frequency. Having local pilots speak Spanish is fine when only Spanish-speaking pilots are on frequency. But when all of that traffic diverted there, including international carriers, the frequency should have shifted to English only... and should have been manned by a controller capable of controlling the airspace in English. It didn't sound like the controller ever even responded to Lufthansa's repeated statement that they were unable to hold over MANGA... which was also repeated by other pilots to the controller. That's just really not acceptable, regardless of how much traffic is on frequency.
Big props to OceanAir 852 & AVA9209 trying to help, but clearly from the comms, either she's : under stress or didn't want to speak to the lufty or couldn't understand each others English. But well done to the ATC guy for steeping in.
What a serious cluster fuck. I can't imagine the kind of stress and pressure approach was under. Props to pilots who were fluent in Spanish that were doing their best to help out LH.
OK... as a retired ATC I must be missing something. The closest they got, according to the playback, was 5-6 miles and diverging (they both were in right turns). That's no where near a deal in my airspace. Heck, that could even be considered wasting space! Sounds like she was training (the guy took over at one point) and her instructor possibly let her go too far. Then again one does need to push the trainee. I had a trainee once that asked me if I knew what he was doing as he did some, shall we say unorthodox, things. I told him I hadn't a clue but I could get out of whatever hole he dug! I also regularly ignored aircraft I didn't need to talk to until I needed them. The controller is the pilots center of attention, the pilot isn't controllers. One position we had was about 60 flying miles from check-in until giving them to the tower (when I worked the approach control). I really didn't need to talk to them for the first 30 or so miles (about 4-5 minutes) so when I was busy (more aircraft than she had) I ignored their initial call until I needed something from them. For her it looked pretty routine; put everyone in holding and peel them off one at a time. She did, as every country does, give priority to the "national" airline. Even though in the U.S. it's first come, first served we were, given a choice, supposed to give an American carrier priority over a foreigner.
This is the situation where the controller needs to ask for help... Seems like too many unfamiliar pilots stacked too close for one person to direct safely. If I was her I would have told half of them to wait out of the way in a hold and dealt with the other half at least until help could arrive. Maybe the airport could have denied some of the aircraft? Told them to change their alternate due to traffic?
Thing is, was she in a position that even allowed her to call for help with the situation? I mean one controller, were other people in the same room? Did she have a supervisor on shift? Was anyone monitoring her? Was there even time with all the radio calls to the tower, for her to be able to call someone over? Would she have had to phone or go somewhere manually? So many factors in why she might not have called for help in this situation.
Although the Lady didn't act very well (she should have asked for help), audio quality is very bad, so when she says in English (at she isn't good at it) it is completely not understandable. But there were a ton of other airplanes also talking in the same time, so she might not have heard the full transmission. Also it probably took sometime for another person to arrive and help her. If she was there alone, she was IN VERY BAD TROUBLE - she'd have to be flawless to maintain everything. What I would change? Well, mandatory English, even on a local Airfield, especially since it is an alternate. Her English is not good enough - but, example from my own country (Poland). Alternate airport of most inbound airplanes is Rzeszów-Jasionka (I forgot the international name, and I have to hurry). There are sometimes problems, when the Warsaw has to close. But there are 2-3 people always at ATC there on the other hand. So a little better than here. Gotta Go
tbh, controller issue.... failure to maintain control.... also, she should be speaking english i thought all controller were supposed to do that for this exact reason
English should be mandatory really, even in South America due to they have to handle international traffic. Clearly she was not up for the job, ATC phraseology has to be very precise for this very specific reason to avoid such incidents. Great work from the other airplanes and the other controller. Well done collab! Great upload as usual mate!
That certainly looked messy. The good thing is the close call was probably as bad as it got. The controller was definitely a bit out of her depth, bless her. For future instances of this they would benefit from some changes in that control center.
Wow. Thank you for uploading. That communication was scary. And though I'm not a pilot and not familiar with aviation I have the feeling that situation was dangerous. It was nice to hear that pilots tried to help.
Why the hell are they mostly speaking in Spanish??? Shouldn't they just use mother language as last resource??? Standard phraseology is not supposed to be in the aviation universal language?
I can't but feel frustrated for the ATC. Way too many traffic for just one controller plus the pilots asking her over and over again for their EAT was not helpful at all.
@@ricardomorillo8763 That's not a real excuse for talking on a full frequency with such minor priority requests, knowing that approach is busy with all those diversions anyhow. None of them was short on fuel, that's what contingency is for. Plus, those asking for an ETA are as affected by the diversion as most other in the airspace, so no reason for pushing harder as long as you don't run out of fuel that is.
Rack em and stack em....scary stuff..clearly overwhelmed and needing more controller staffing. understaffed tower and impatient pilots make for a stressful situation. When the pilots started cross talking to assist and walking over the controllers transmissions things got unnerving. This is a particularly scary situation because the English speaking pilots rely on ATC guidance because they have no way of making a "picture" of the airspace by listening to other Spanish speaking aircraft.
Many times management cut corners because of $, e.g. lowering the minimum requirement for ATCs, only give minimal training, overwork controllers, you name it. I'm not even mentioning corruptions....
I am a Spanish native and It was easier for my to understand the Lufthansa pilot speaking English than the Colombian controller. She has a very strong Colombian accent. Of course she was overloaded but English is the international aviation language. All pilots and controllers should speak, and understand English IMHO.
I never knew that Spanish was used as official language in regions where Spanish is the native language. This makes non-Spanish speakers feel like outsiders literally and unlike regions where English is the only official flight language, non-Spanish speakers cannot overhear potentially conflicting instructions from ATC to other planes.
A professional pilot should have been more familiar with his alternate airports and their transitions. MANGA is a fix that is published on one of the STARS for Cali. There are 2 pilots on the Lufthansa airplane and one should have been able to figure out how to get to MANGA. Someone commented that if there was a NYC controller it would be better. A NYC controller would have told the pilot off for not figuring out how to get to MANGA. Also, a couple of pilots did not know in which direction the turns were on the holding fix. That is also something that is published. Pilots inquiring about things that they should already know just adds to the controllers workload.
It always makes me super nervous whenever the plane I’m in gets put in a holding pattern, because I can’t help to think about all the other aircraft that are in the same situation flying all around me.
Sounded to me like the pilots were bullying her a little. No reason for every pilot to clog frequency and ask for an eta when they can clearly tell she's busy.
@@MarcQuiclic ROZO and TULUA used to be the two main navigation points leading up to Cali. Played somewhat of a role in the crash of American Airlines Flight 965.
Ok after watching video and reading thorugh comments I need to say that ATC was in stress due to situation with a lot of inbound traffic and little space to work with but 98% of communications were done in Spanish and if I were a pilot I would be confused as well. First if I know as pilot what are ATC instructions to others I would know what to expect and what to pay attention to but if I don't understand language spooken on frequency what can I do. I am one of ATCos at VATSIM (not scary as RL but can be hard if you follow RL procedures) and when you experience a lot of traffic inbound to same airport communication is what helps you solve issues in air. This happily had nice ending but if this happens again somewhere it would end up badly
