The point being that the international ATC language is considered to be English. They made some examples of cases of near misses and crashes caused by either the non use of English, in the case of the CDG collision, or poor understanding of English, as in the case of the Khazakstani radio operator, who took 17 seconds to respond to an instruction from Delhi ATC to remain at 15000 feet.
This time delay led to the plane descending into the path of the Saudi 747 which had just left the airport.
In the case of the Air Lib/Streamline collision, the AF pilot’s had rejected just 8 days earlier an edict from management to speak English whilst talking to ATC at the airport, stating that they would be “abandoning their native tongue”.
The problem arose because international pilots using the taxi and runways couldn’t work out where the French speaking planes were and became distracted by the use of “native tongue” amongst French pilots and ATC. The ATC would speak English to international pilots but insisted in speaking French amongst AF (and other) pilots.
The Streamline Shorts 330 was cleared to enter a runway whilst an Air Lib plane was commencing it’s take off run. The Air Lib plane’s wing tip sliced through the cockpit of the Shorts at approximately 90 degrees, killing one pilot and badly injuring the other The surviving Streamline pilot said had they understood that the Air Lib plane would be there, the accident would not have happened.
Despite the death of the UK pilot, the decision to use native tongue amongst French flight and ATC staff was not overturned.
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