As an aviation geek, I spend way too much of my free time tracking flights on Flightradar24, and listening to air traffic control audio. Along those lines, here’s an interesting exchange between an air traffic controller at JFK and LATAM pilots.
LATAM pilot struggles to understand JFK ATC
Some air traffic controllers at JFK are known for speaking incredibly fast, and also having a short fuse. At times that leads to some unprofessional and frustrating exchanges, especially given how many foreign pilots JFK has.
Perhaps the most famous ATC exchange ever at JFK was over a decade ago, between a ground controller and the pilots of an Air China Boeing 747 that were operating flight CA981. If you haven’t heard that before, you can find it below.
Earlier this month (on March 8, 2023), a pretty interesting exchange happened between a JFK ground controller and the pilots of a LATAM Boeing 777-300ER that had just landed from Sao Paulo. The gate wasn’t quite ready for the plane, meaning that the LATAM jet had to stay on the taxiway for some extra time, before entering the ramp (which often involves taxiing around, so that no taxiways are blocked).
There ended up being a major communication gap between the air traffic controller and the pilots. Below you can see the VASAviation video of the exchange, which includes both the audio and a visualization of what happened. I figure that’s better than me trying to summarize the incident.
Who was in the wrong — the controller or the pilots?
The LATAM pilots definitely could have had a better grasp of English, and were clearly struggling to understand the directions they were given. Ideally that wouldn’t be the case, but it’s pretty common, especially at airports like JFK.
It’s quite dismaying to see how the ground controller is communicating with the pilots, though. If someone doesn’t have a great grasp of the English language and doesn’t understand you, you think the solution is to just say it again, only faster and more angrily? Wouldn’t it make more sense to speak a bit more slowly, so you hopefully don’t have to repeat yourself multiple times?
It reminds me a bit of many of the TSA agents you’ll find at JFK, especially at Terminal 1. The terminal sees a lot of foreigners, so rather than kindly explaining the rules to them, they yell really angrily and talk fast, thinking that will make the situation better.
I imagine the LATAM pilots were also caught off guard by the instruction that they should taxi onto a runway. We’ve seen quite a few ground incidents lately at US airports, so the pilots probably assumed that they must have misunderstood that, but struggled to communicate.
I think this comment on the YouTube video sums up the situation pretty well:
This should be presented on ATCO training on how not to deal with a communications problem.
Yes, there’s definitely a language barrier (amongst other factors), but what a terrible management by JFK ground. Once a communication issue is detected, the controller insists on speaking fast. Instead of deescalating the situation, the ATCO just made things way worse putting more pressure onto an already confused crew! That’s definitely not the proper way to deal with this kind of situation, making it way worse as if JFK GND wasn’t stressful enough. That’s not a proper attitude from an Air Navigation Services Provider at the level and importance of JFK.
The TAM crew sounds lost and confused, and beyond the language barrier, there are hints that they were not aware of the differences between ICAO and FAA phraseology and procedures. There aren’t many airports in Brazil with 2 or more runways, so the pilots are strongly educated to only enter runways if explicitly cleared to do so by the TWR. Getting a taxi authorization from the GND to enter a runway is not something usual here, so it’s something that could have played a factor on why they didn’t comply with the instructions.
Kudos to the Republic crew, acting to solve the situation, doing the job of both the TAM8180 and JFK GND.
Bottom line
A JFK ground controller and LATAM Boeing 777 pilots had a pretty heated exchange on the morning of March 8, 2023. While the pilots definitely struggled with their grasp of the English language, the controller wasn’t making things better by simply repeating the same thing faster and more angrily. Unfortunately this seems to be the standard operating procedure for many JFK controllers…
What do you make of this ATC exchange?
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