International ATC

[JackieAdkins]

how does this work out, if an American pilot  flys say from LA to Japan, how does he come in contact with the tower? are all ATC operators required to be bilinguel in many differ languages? or how does that work?

[beefhole]

English is the universal language of aviation.  If you want to fly, or be an air traffic controller, you must speak english. HOWEVER, in many places, especially Asia, it can be downright dangerous not to speak the local language-as many people who speak english in other countries don't speak it well.

As for contacting the CT, etc., I'd assume it's the same.

[Saratoga]

Yup, when I started flying internationally they told me if I ran into a controller I couldn't communicate with to switch back to my previous frequency and that guy would hand us to someone different. Or we could just fly the approach and ignore the guy.