In a 2019 sketch from the US late-night comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL), the actor James McAvoy plays a Scottish air traffic controller attempting to help a US brand integration manager (Mikey Day) land a plane in distress, because the pilot has been knocked unconscious. The fact that Day’s character is not a pilot only partly explains why the mayday call is not a success. McAvoy lays on thick Glaswegian, in both accent and vocab, and none of the Americans on board understand a word he says.
Airline safety is just one area of work where hazards in miscommunication are important to recognise. Research has long shown that communication issues are a chief cause of airline crashes. The SNL sketch neatly illustrates the potential problems that can arise when people don’t understand each other’s accents.
