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Intercultural Communication on the Flight Deck: A Review of Studies in Aviation

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Advances in Human Aspects of Transportation (AHFE 2018)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 786))

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Abstract

It has become evident in recent decades that many airline accidents have been at least partly caused by cultural factors. The first section of this paper reviews definitions of culture, which within aviation is typically divided into national, organizational and professional culture. The second section summarizes approaches in the study of intercultural communication that are relevant to airline flight operations, including the limitations of each approach. The third section describes eight studies that investigated intercultural communication in airline contexts in a variety of countries. The paper highlights the need for further research into the effects of culture on flight deck interaction in monocultural airlines compared with multicultural airlines. Although this review covers studies in civil aviation, it is relevant to other contexts in which small multicultural teams operate in high-risk environments, such as space missions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hall expressed a similar sentiment when he observed that “culture is communication and communication is culture” [24].

  2. 2.

    The accident context was unusual: it occurred on New Year’s Eve; there were no passengers; and the captain was junior to the first officer in terms of previous air force service.

  3. 3.

    Linde noted that “the use of indirect speech acts for mitigation is extremely complex” and emphasized the importance of understanding the communication context [63]

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aviation Management Department, J. F. Oberlin University, 3758 Tokiwa-Machi, Machida-shi, Tokyo, 194-0294, Japan

    Simon Cookson

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  1. Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, Transportation Research Group, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Neville Stanton

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Cookson, S. (2019). Intercultural Communication on the Flight Deck: A Review of Studies in Aviation. In: Stanton, N. (eds) Advances in Human Aspects of Transportation. AHFE 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 786. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93885-1_8

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