Effective aeronautical communications in multicultural contexts and the role of intercultural communication as a non-technical skill

Abstract

Taking into consideration the ever-growing multicultural exchange that aviation involves its elements in, this tentative study features an attempt of assessing the extent to which cultural factors influence intercultural aeronautical communications. Through a digital questionnaire developed along the analysis on the literature existent on culture and communication in aviation, 18 pilots from 4 countries contributed to the assessment of intercultural communication difficulties and the levels of awareness sampled from the mitigating actions they reported taking at their workplace. The look at intercultural competence as a key factor in a non-technical skillset for aviation professionals is also a premise of the study towards raising the industry awareness. Responses from the questionnaire pointed out both common and distinct communication difficulties, as well as mitigating actions pilots already practiced to overcome these issues. Through the analysis, the way an individual perceives culture and its utterances was shown to be an important factor in the process of comprehension and maintenance of communicative effectiveness. The research shows how important is the development of communication skills and intercultural competence, regardless of the level of exposure to multiculturalism.