Source: aviation.stackexchange.com - Sunday, April 19, 2015 At the time of my retirement in 1999, controllers in France, Spain, Italy, and Greece typically spoke to their native pilots in their native language in spite of the fact that English was/is the international language of aviation and is specified as such by ICAO. Not following the ICAO convention deprived non-native speaking pilots of valuable situational information. Does anyone know if any of the aforementioned countries have come around to having their controllers always speak English?All Related | More on Italy