On line 3 the Co-pilot issues a confirmation of their heading, thus orienting this part of his answer to ATC’s question-design (Sacks 1987: 57). What is immediately apparent is the mismatch between what the Captain orders the Co-pilot to communicate on line 2: that they are in an emergency – and what the Co-pilot actually says on lines 3-4. So, essentially that line is only heard by those in the cockpit.ġ ATC: Avianca zero five two you’re making the left turn correct sir?Ģ (Cockpit) Captain: tell them we are in emergencyģ Co-pilot: that’s right↗ to one eight zero on the headingĤ Co-pilot: and uh we’ll try once again we’re running out of fuel↘ Note that the line uttered by the Captain (beginning with “(Cockpit)”) indicates that ATC cannot hear it because they only had direct radio contact to the Co-pilot. The Avianca flight 52 crew had already informed ATC of their dangerously low fuel levels on at least three separate occasions prior to this missed approach.

Previous to the following excerpt, Avianca flight 52 had just attempted and failed a “missed approach” which in aircraft lingo means landing a plane manually without instrument assistance. In the case of Avianca flight 52 the Captain’s English proficiency was so low that the Co-pilot had to function as a mediator, essentially handling all communications between the aircraft and ATC. The discursive space of Pilot-ATC interactions differs from everyday conversations mainly in four ways: 1) it is highly mediated, i.e., both ATC and the flight crew function as information go-betweens 2) it is highly regulated, i.e., communications contain a high amount of scripted language (Garcia 2016: 58) 3) it is a stressful and demanding environment, and 4) its primary actors come from different cultures and organizational structures (Howard 2008: 372). Interactions between pilots and ATC take place in a challenging environment and, contrary to everyday life, misunderstandings or miscommunications can have deadly consequences. The transcriptions in this article follow Gail Jefferson’s transcription conventions. The audio was recorded on the Cockpit Voice Recorder aka the black box of the aircraft. Here, I offer a mini conversation analysis (CA) based analysis of some of the final Pilot-Air Traffic Control (ATC) interactions from Avianca flight 52. The official Aircraft Accident Report subsequently concluded that the main causes of the accident were “the failure of the flight crew to adequately manage the airplane’s fuel load, and their failure to communicate an emergency fuel situation to air traffic control before fuel exhaustion occurred” (National Transportation Safety Board: v). Kennedy airport, killing 73 of the 158 people aboard.

On January 25 th,1990 Avianca flight 52 flying from Medellín, Colombia to New York crashed around 30 km from John F.

Atc communications aircraft accidents