Don't be lazy, say it in full! - Part III

This is the final installment relating to the above. This final story is rather an unfortunate story relating to miscommunication. Many years ago, some of you may remember a tragic accident where a passenger airplane crashed resulting everyone on board perished. When the black box was retrieved, the investigators found that the accident happened due to miscommunication between the Air Traffic Control and the pilot.

Apparently what happened was that when the Air Traffic Control was guiding the aircraft on its approach to the airport, they gave instructions to the pilot to descend the aircraft. The instruction given to the pilot was “to descend aircraft from 10,000 feet to 2 500 feet”. Do you see where the miscommunication here? The pilot heard the instruction as “to descend the flight to (2) 500 feet” whereas what the Air Traffic Control meant was to have the aircraft descend to 2,500 feet (two thousand five hundred feet). As you probably guess, by descending the flight to 500 feet, the aircraft crashed into a hill amidst in darkness. What happened here was that the Air Traffic Control used “short cut” language. Instead of saying “two thousand five hundred feet”, the Traffic Control said “two five hundred” where “two” was misinterpreted as “to”. From then onwards, all traffic controllers are now required to say the numbers in full and no short-cut. So, again, don’t be lazy, say it in full!