Aviation Communication Practices and Challenges Among Malaysian Air Traffic Controllers

Abstract

English functions as the international language of aviation and plays a critical role in ensuring safe communication between air traffic controllers (ATCs) and pilots. While aviation communication is governed by standardised phraseology, non-routine situations often require the use of spontaneous plain English, particularly in multilingual operational environments. This qualitative study explores communication practices and challenges among Malaysian ATCs in operational aviation contexts. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight licensed Malaysian ATCs, and the data were analysed thematically. The findings indicate that routine aviation communication is highly structured and role-dependent, relying heavily on standard phraseology to maintain operational clarity and efficiency. However, non-routine situations require controllers to adapt their language use beyond fixed phraseology. Accent intelligibility emerged as a major communication challenge, particularly in interactions with international pilots, where pronunciation differences occasionally contributed to misunderstandings and increased cognitive demands. The findings also highlight the importance of collaborative repair strategies, including repetition, clarification, and readback verification, in maintaining communication safety. This study provides context-specific insights into how Malaysian ATCs manage multilingual operational communication in safety-critical environments and highlights the importance of intelligibility and adaptive communication practices in aviation English.