What Happened?
In January 1990, Avianca Flight 52 from Bogota, Colombia, to New York City, was running out of fuel on approach to John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Due to weather conditions, the aircraft was kept in a holding pattern prior to landing, even though its fuel situation was critical. The flight crew communicated the situation to the ground crew, but according to reports, they failed to use correct terminology to describe the situation. They did not, for example, use the word “emergency.” Unfortunately, air traffic control underestimated the seriousness of the situation, and the Boeing 707 aircraft crashed into a residential area on Long Island, killing 73 of the 158 people on board.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined the crash occurred partly from the flight crew’s failure to properly communicate a fuel emergency.
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Lisa March is a bilingual Marketing and Sales Executive. She works closely with LTI on strategic partnerships, business development and marketing. Her efforts help LTI scale the use and implementation of language assessments in schools, institutions, corporations and government agencies.
The number of foreign language speakers in the United States has increased an impressive 90% since 1990. There are 38.4 million Spanish speakers reported in the US. The next most common language is Chinese, with 3 million speakers, followed by 1.6 million Tagalog speakers, 1.4 million Vietnamese speakers and 1.3 million French speakers. These populations translate into a new challenge for healthcare professionals and organizations across the nation.
We’re operating in a global economy. As a result, competition is far reaching, and companies are increasingly finding themselves at a competitive disadvantage when employees lack the functional language skills needed to do their job. These companies should be considering the following questions; are your employees actually qualified to communicate in another language effectively? How do you assess the functional language ability of your employees? Is the means of assessment reliable and legally defensible?