"Ramapriya" wrote in message

Have anyone of you had a problem with the accents of various ATC chaps
around the world?

Is this a trivial problem, considering the standard phraseology in use
in ATC communications, or can it lead to something worse?

The myriad accents are exactly why standardized phraseology is important in
international ops. I personally think a lot of folks get overly anal about
it in domestic use, but that's just my opinion.

There were some places I had to work at understanding ATC, but the only
place I had a real problem was Cairo. I have a devil of a time
understanding an Egyptian speaking English. Similar difficulty in other
areas of northeast Africa, but Cairo was the worst, for me. Another problem
of a different kind was in Saudi Arabia. Many of their controllers refused
to answer the radio for a female pilot. Welcome to the fourteenth century!

Quick story re standardized language: We used to fuel stop in Khabarovsk
enroute HKG-ANC. In the early 90s, we were among the first Americans to
regularly use the port commercially after the USSR collapse, and the Russian
ATC guys were not all that proficient at English, particularly if you had to
go non-standard. On one of our first trips in, we called approaching
Russian airspace, but we were quite a bit earlier than schedule (the
vagaries of the cargo world). The Russian on the ground replied,
laboriously churning out the unfamiliar words " _________, why are you
here?" To my American pop-culture ears, raised in the 50s and 60s US of A,
he sounded for all the world like Boris Badenov!!!! I couldn't help myself.
Grabbing the mike, I put on my best, deep, gutteral accent and said,
"...Looking for moose and squirrel!"

The poor son of a gun on the ground had no idea what we were saying, and the
four of us in the office were incapacitated laughing for a good 2 or 3
minutes. I've often wondered how close we came to getting escorted or shot
at!!