Peter R. writes:

A leading cause of accidents? Where did you get this statistic?

From the NTSB and several books on the subject.

Guess? If a pilot or controller is not able to comprehend the other side's
transmission, there is no guess. "Say again?" is the phrase of choice and
it is used all over the frequencies.

It's routine in linguistics to unconsciously guess. A person
listening to familiar sounds in a familiar context will "fill in the
blanks" for any sounds that cannot be unambiguously distinguished, and
he will do this without thinking. If he guesses wrong, trouble can
result, and accidents have happened in aviation for this reason (the
most famous probably being the one at Tenerife).

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