We’re talking about maintenance workers, not ATC. Not to mention that the FAA doesn’t necessarily apply to foreign workers. I mean how can Vanity Fair claim on

We’re talking about maintenance workers, not ATC. Not to mention that the FAA doesn’t necessarily apply to foreign workers. I mean how can Vanity Fair claim on one hand that English is a necessity for FAA certification, and on the other hand claim that these workers don’t speak English? Is this a fault of the airlines, the maintenance workers, or the FAA? Or is it just xenophobic reporting? Do workers in Mexico even need to be FAA certified? I know for a fact that’s not the case for LAMEs in Australia. In terms of the technical manuals, the ones for Boeing may well be in English, but I suspect the ones written in Brazil, France and Italy don’t start life in English. And the use of English is certainly not universal in aviation (just see how often Simon complains about accident reports at AVH).