Article published In:
Australian Review of Applied LinguisticsVol. 32:3 (2009) ► pp.22.1–22.14
Zagreb and Tenerife
Airline accidents involving linguistic factors
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is currently implementing a program to improve the language proficiency of pilots and air traffic controllers worldwide. In justifying the program, ICAO has cited a number of airline accidents that were at least partly caused by language factors. Two accidents cited by ICAO are analysed in this paper: the mid-air collision above Zagreb in 1976, and the runway collision at Tenerife in 1977. The paper examines the linguistic factors involved in each accident, such as code switching and L1 interference, and uses the ‘Swiss cheese’ model of accident causation developed by Reason (1990) and adapted by Wiegmann and Shappell (2003) to put these factors into a broader aviation context. It is shown that, while linguistic factors were in each case significant, both accidents occurred as the result of multiple causal factors, many of which were non-linguistic. Furthermore, stress and fatigue played a decisive role in exacerbating the linguistic factors in each accident. Finally, the paper suggests lessons that may be drawn from the analysis for the training of pilots and air traffic controllers, both nativespeaker and non native-speaker.
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].
References
Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB)
(1977) British Airways Trident G-AWZT, Inex-Adria DC-9 YU-AJR: Report on the Collision in the Zagreb Area, Yugoslavia, on 10 September 1976. Aircraft Accident Report 5/77. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
(1982) British Airways Trident G-AWZT, Inex-Adria DC-9 YU-AJR: Report on the Collision in the Zagreb Area, Yugoslavia, on 10 September 1976. Aircraft Accident Report 9/82. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Beaty, David
(1995) The Naked Pilot: The Human Factor in Aircraft Accidents (new ed.). Marlborough, UK: Airlife Publishing.
Civil Aviation Accidents and Incidents Investigation Commission (CIAIAC)
(1978) KLM, B-747, PH-BUF and Pan Am B-747, N736, Collision at Tenerife Airport, Spain, on 27 March 1977. Report Number CIAIAC A-102/1977. Madrid: Secretary of Civil Aviation.
Cushing, Steven
(1994) Fatal Words: Communication Clashes and Aircraft Crashes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Dismukes, R. Key; Berman, Benjamin A.; Loukopoulos, Loukia D.
(2007) The Limits of Expertise: Rethinking Pilot Error and the Causes of Airline Accidents. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
Ganushchak, Lesya Y; Schiller, Niels O.
(2009) Speaking one’s second language under time pressure: An ERP study on verbal self-monitoring in German-Dutch bilinguals. Psychophysiology, 46(2), 410–419. 
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
(1980) Aircraft Accident Digest No. 23: 1977. ICAO Circular 153-AN/98. Montreal, Canada: ICAO.
(2004) Manual on the Implementation of ICAO Language Proficiency Requirements. ICAO Document 9835, November 2004 Montreal, Canada: ICAO.
Lamy, Paul
(2008, January). Module 1 – Language Proficiency Requirements Update. Paper presented at the Language Proficiency Implementation Plan Workshop held at the ICAO Asia and Pacific Office, Bangkok, Thailand.
Maurino, Daniel E.; Reason, James; Johnston, Neil; Lee, Rob B.
(1995) Beyond Aviation Human Factors. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
Monan, William P.
(1986) Human Factors in Aviation Operations: The Hearback Problem. NASA Contractor Report 177398. Moffett Field, CA: NASA Ames Research Center.
Reason, James
(1990) Human Error. Cambridge: CUP.
Roitsch, Paul A.; Babcock, Gary L.; Edmunds, William W.
(1978) Human Factors Report on the Tenerife Accident. Washington, D.C.: Air Line Pilots Association.
Stokes, Alan; Kite, Kirsten
(1994) Flight Stress: Stress, Fatigue, and Performance in Aviation. Hampshire, England: Avebury Aviation.
Weston, Richard; Hurst, Ronald
(1982) Zagreb One Four: Cleared to Collide? New York: Jason Aronson, Inc.
Wiegmann, Douglas A.; Shappell, Scott A.
(2003) A Human Error Approach to Aviation Accident Analysis: The Human Factors Analysis and Classification System. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
Cited by
Cited by 11 other publications
Drayton, Jenny & Averil Coxhead
2023. The development, evaluation and application of an aviation radiotelephony specialised technical vocabulary list. English for Specific Purposes 69 ► pp. 51 ff. 
Fiset, John, Devasheesh P. Bhave & Nilotpal Jha
2024. The Effects of Language-Related Misunderstanding at Work. Journal of Management 50:1 ► pp. 347 ff.
Hamzah, Haryani
2021. CLARITY AND PRONUNCIATION OF AB-INITIO AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER. Aviation 25:4 ► pp. 252 ff.
Jin, Yan & Liz Hamp-Lyons
2015. A new test for China? Stages in the development of an assessment for professional purposes. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice 22:4 ► pp. 397 ff.
Katerinakis, Theodoros
2019. Knowledgeable Sounds of Silence or When Silence Is Not Golden. In The Social Construction of Knowledge in Mission-Critical Environments [Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management, ], ► pp. 91 ff.
Katerinakis, Theodoros
2019. Eliciting Expertise, Harvesting, and Representing Knowledge. In The Social Construction of Knowledge in Mission-Critical Environments [Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management, ], ► pp. 59 ff.
Katerinakis, Theodoros
2019. Communication and Human Factors Phenomena in Aviation Transmit Knowledge. In The Social Construction of Knowledge in Mission-Critical Environments [Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management, ], ► pp. 17 ff.
Kim, Youn-hee
2023. The challenges of radiotelephony communication and effective training approaches: A study of Korean pilots and air traffic controllers. English for Specific Purposes 72 ► pp. 26 ff.
Luva, Bridie & Anjum Naweed
2022. Authority gradients between team workers in the rail environment: a critical research gap. Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science 23:2 ► pp. 155 ff.
Moder, Carol Lynn
2012. Aviation English. In The Handbook of English for Specific Purposes, ► pp. 227 ff.
Trippe, Julia & Melissa Baese-Berk
2019. A prosodic profile of American Aviation English. English for Specific Purposes 53 ► pp. 30 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.