Narrative:

Enroute on airway A347 near amvig waypoint we were being controlled by mumbai on 132.7. They switched us to the next sector's controller on 123.75. When we checked in on 123.75; that controller said that he had been trying to contact us several times and that he had asked other aircraft to contact us via guard. We informed him that we had just been switched to his frequency and never heard anyone contact us on guard despite the fact that we had been monitoring guard continuously. The controller continued to berate us for several minutes. Eventually he switched us to the next sector; who we could not reach initially by radio. We switched back to 123.75 and informed the controller that we had negative contact with the next sector. He told us to switch anyway and try again in thirty miles or so. We finally got communication with the next controller about 50- 70 miles later. While it is possible that we missed a frequency change at some point; we were in communication with our previous controller on 132.7 continuously prior to being switched to 123.75 and; as far as we know; we switched to 123.75 the first time that we were instructed to do so. We also had a listening watch on 121.5 the entire time and never heard any other aircraft relay a switch to us. I suspect that language barriers and poor ATC radio facilities played a major role in this situation.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: An A300 flight crew apparently missed a frequency change in VABF airspace and was berated by the next controller for not monitoring guard.

Narrative: Enroute on airway A347 near AMVIG waypoint we were being controlled by Mumbai on 132.7. They switched us to the next sector's controller on 123.75. When we checked in on 123.75; that controller said that he had been trying to contact us several times and that he had asked other aircraft to contact us via Guard. We informed him that we had just been switched to his frequency and never heard anyone contact us on Guard despite the fact that we had been monitoring guard continuously. The controller continued to berate us for several minutes. Eventually he switched us to the next sector; who we could not reach initially by radio. We switched back to 123.75 and informed the controller that we had negative contact with the next sector. He told us to switch anyway and try again in thirty miles or so. We finally got communication with the next controller about 50- 70 miles later. While it is possible that we missed a frequency change at some point; we were in communication with our previous controller on 132.7 continuously prior to being switched to 123.75 and; as far as we know; we switched to 123.75 the first time that we were instructed to do so. We also had a listening watch on 121.5 the entire time and never heard any other aircraft relay a switch to us. I suspect that language barriers and poor ATC radio facilities played a major role in this situation.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.