Importance of Communication in Aviation (Essay Sample)

AVIA 300: Aviation Safety Final Paper
The importance of communication in aviation safety
Communication carries much weight in the undertaking of safety precautions and prevention of Aviation accidents. Poor communication has contributed to a number of deadly plane crashes since the beginning of modern air travel. Due to this, all professional elements in the aviation industry have the responsibility to level up their level of communication in order to minimize the risks of catastrophic accidents that could be forestalled with adequate communication (Gilstrap, 2019). Communication is inherent in every human undertaking, and a breakdown is likely to lead to failure. Take the case of the Tower of Babel. The people we’re able to build a majestic tower up to a point but when their communication was disrupted and they could not understand each other, they failed to complete their construction (Genesis 11:9).
Communication’s most important factor in aviation is to elevate the level of safety and reduce preventable accidents. During the early stages of aviation, it was a generally held assumption that the sky was so expansive that there were zero to one chances for two planes to randomly collide. This held up until the terrific collision of two planes over the Grand Canyon in 1956. The accident spurred the creation of the FAA, a factor that heralded the effort to improve aviation safety across all industry aspects and this marked the start of improved communication in the sector (Gilstrap, 2019).
Since the beginning of modern air travel, a number of plane crashes have been attributed to poor communication. Case in point, an instance had the flight crew reporting to Air Traffic Control that they were “running out of fuel”. This was in contrast to the industry standard signaling of an emergency situation with the statement “Mayday”. Mayday is a specific phraseology for declaring an emergency. As much as stating that the plane was running out of fuel sounded like an emergency declaration at face value, this could be conflicting in Aviation communication. In the context of cockpit-ATC communication, the statement was interpreted as a mere mention of concern as opposed to what it really was; an emergency. The plane went on to crash as it ran out of fuel (Gilstrap, 2019).
Communication errors and problems can occur between pilots and their crew, pilots and their copilots, Air traffic control and individual pilots and even among the crew on the ground. This could result from information overload as increased amounts of transmitted information increase the risk of errors. Pronunciation issues could also be a factor. There exists a huge probability of communicating unclear information due to mispronunciation mainly in the case of non-native English speakers. Most errors in aviation communication are as a result of a general misunderstanding. This could result from variations in intonation, speech rate, stresses, sentence structure or pauses of the communication (Orlady, 1999).
As English was adopted as a mainstream aviation language, non-native English speakers have to take up learning in the language as all flight manuals, rules and checklists are written in English. It becomes a problem when English is a second language to the individual as humans generally think better in their first language. Issues also arise with a pilot’s accent. When other flight personnel fail to grasp an individual’s accent, confusion may be caused as to matters relating to flight location, intention and so on (Orlady, 1999).
One of the main types of accidents caused by such types of miscommunications is mid-air collisions due to misunderstanding. Mid-air collisions tend to be fatal or extremely serious. It is extremely rare for any mid-air collisions to end without deaths or injuries. Miscommunication resulting from English as a second language has played a large role in past accidents in the aviation industry (Orlady, 1999)
Smith-Christensen and Durkert (1995) point out that effective communication in the cockpit is a prerequisite for safety. Foushee (1982) noted that patterns of communication are important inflection points of personnel coordination and information transfer. Spoken communication is especially vulnerable to failure through human performance limitations. (Monan, 1988).
Communication in Aviation is two-pronged, it is both verbal and written. Written information transmission is arguably the most prevalent form in the aviation sector mostly through the use of standard operating procedures, checklists, flight plans and so forth. Flight instructions and information are transmitted through writing between flight crew.
These written documents are crucial in aiding flight personnel whenever they encounter problems in the course of operation. It is expected of them, to provide instructions with pin-point accuracy. However, flight operation personnel often find it difficult to read through these manuals as they are excessively documented with improper and excessive wording. This becomes an even greater challenge during serious incidents and often leads to impaired decision making leading to accidents.
A significant part of operational communication utilizes verbal media, and as such should be improved upon in practice. Majority of air accident reports place blame on erred communication between cockpit personnel and ATCs as a prevalent causative factor in aircraft accidents, and thus suggest keen consideration. A swathe of innovative mechanisms have been adopted by the Aviation sector in an innovative mood to ramp up the quality of communication between flight personnel.
One of the world’s deadliest runway accidents occurred in 1977. Pan Am (PAA) flight 1736 collided with KLM Flight 4805 in Canary Island. As much as the usual terminology was used between the Air traffic controllers and the pilots, there still arose confusion due to misinterpretation resulting