Bus 303 - the Avianca Disaster

Justin Lau 133309

BUS303 Section 2

Individual assignment

The Avianca Disaster is one of the most debatable flight accident in the 1990s. 73 people were killed in the accident. After the investigation of the accident, still no concise conclusion can be drawn. Yet, no matter who should be blamed for the accidents, there are undoubtedly tons of communication noise between the flight crews, the control tower and the air traffic controllers which affected the effectiveness of the communication.

Physical noise

Physical noise is one of the most obvious noise that affected the effective communication of the people involved. Sometimes, noise from the nearby environment can affect the encoding process and thus affect the whole delivery of the messages. Even a little and simple sudden noise can distract a listener so that he cannot totally focus on a conversation.

In the case of the Avianca disaster, the captain has told the vice-captain that he couldn’t see what the vice-captain said for at least 5 times. During the conversation of the flight crew, there are many surrounding noise made. For example, the noise of the machinery, and the noise of the engines. These surrounding noise can affect the effective communication between the flight crews. What’s more, it may lengthen the time of message delivery.

Semantic noise

Moreover, semantic noise is also a major noise that my affect the communication process. This type of noise occurs when grammar or technical language is used that the receiver cannot understand it clearly. When the sender of the message uses a word or a phrase that we don't know the meaning of, we may perceive the massage in a different way from the speakers. Actually, the signal is received, but it doesn’t get processed the same way at the destination as it was intended at the source. Another communication noise is the psychological noise.

In the case, there are semantic noise between the flight crew and the control tower. In the case, the flight crew only told the control tower that they need “priority” to land the airplane and there is a run out of fuel. However, because of the different perception of the wordings, the receiver (control tower) didn’t actually how serious was the problem. To make clear of the message, the flight crew had to use some international accepted word such as “Mayday” or other similar which could raise the attention of the control tower and thus give a more suitable order.

Psychological noise

Psychological noise is defined as a person's internal preoccupations, prejudices, opinions and other qualities that affect his ability to understand and communicate in an environment. For example, when someone is worried about a problem, he is less able to listen and process what he hears. The worries are making mental noise that is distracting him from the conversation at hand.

Lack of attention is the major psychological noise that occurred during the communication of the flight crew and the control tower. Since there were numbers of airline problem in the same, the control tower was in a mess. When the flight crew was communicating with the control tower, the controller wasn’t give full attention to the situation of the airplane. At that time, the controller was dealing with other problem, thus he didn’t reply the enquiry of the flight crew immediately.