(I'm not cabin crew, but thought this was the best place to post this. Mods, please feel free to move it if necessary...)

Last week I flew from Pisa to Gatwick on Easyjet. I noticed that none of the cabin crew had the little flag on their name tags indicating that they spoke Italian. This reminded me of last year when I flew from Naples to Gatwick on BA, none of the cabin crew spoke Italian. Some Italian passengers gave up trying to buy goods from the trolley as they were unable to make themselves understood when they had questions. No great disaster in this case, but would the difficulty in communication not be a potential problem in an emergency situation?

This isn't a criticism of the cabin crew themselves (I don't expect every BA cabin crew to speak the language of every country in their network), but of the organisation of the airlines. Surely a global airline like BA should be able to ensure that at the very least one CC member speaks the language of the destination (especially a major European language like Italian)? The BA & Easyjet Gatwick bases operate to several Italian destinations so it should be worthwhile having an operable number of Italian speakers on staff.

On a slightly separate note, while checking in at Pisa last week, the screens above the Easyjet desks were marked 'Check-in' and 'baggage drop' (in English). The only word of Italian on the screen was the word 'volo' next to the flight number. Needless to say, Italian customers were queuing in both lines regardless of whether they were checking in or dropping bags (can't blame them) . I appreciate that English is the closest thing we have to an international language, but there are millions of people out there who dont speak it.
(There is also the question of simple respect... Is it really good customer service that an Italian needs to be able to speak English to easily get on a plane in his / her own country...)

Well jensdad, here's my take on your question. Roughly a decade ago BA decided to only recruit staff with a second language; the recruitment team advertised in all the major European destinations to find linguists. Once they all started work however we discovered a problem. Those 300 crew who spoke say Italian were not really wanting to spend their whole career operating to places that they already knew, they wanted (unsurprisingly) to see the world. So after a few months on Eurofleet, they applied to transfer to Worldwide. So it is that, on a flight to HKG you could well have a fluent Italian speaker, a native Spaniard and some conversational French and German but the flight to Rome has a Punjabi speaker and someone who can 'sign'. Add to that the different cost of living in each country and a Turkish speaker would earn significantly less than a German speaker.

For some longhaul routes we get around the problem by employing ICC crew who are based say in Japan, China, India, etc and just shuttle back and forth to their native land. As they are employed on that basis they can't transfer off of the route. Having crew based all over the world though to supply every single language would be both expensive and a logistical nightmare. In an ideal world we cabin crew would all speak half a dozen languages but since we don't we tend to get by on gesticulating and when really stuck by appealing to bilingual passengers. Luckily enough for us in the UK the accepted language for aviation is English.

Ottergirl

As otter girl has so clearly stated BA have tried very hard to accommodate languages but the logistics of this are almost impossible.

In the good old days on Longhaul cabin crew who spoke French found themselves being rostered endless Montreal trips and in the end withdrew their 'flag'.


In Europe the crew will operate more than one flight per day as a crew on the first part to, say Frankfurt, they may have a German speaker but the next part is Pisa so maybe no Italian.


All airlines in UK will have the same problems and I bet when Alitalia fly to Sweden they don't always have a Swedish speaker!

I flew MAD - AMS on Iberia, and happened to sit opposite a crew member on a jump seat. She spoke no English beyond the ability to read the announcements, so I asked her,if she spoke Dutch, as it was an AMS flight. 'No', she said. So I asked her what her second language was, and she said 'English' .
'Hang on' ... I said, 'you told me you don't speak English.'
"Yes' she said : "Ees true, but the person who do me the test, she speak more bad English than me.....'

"when in Rome", next time fly Iatalia...Just how will all these Itallians suvive when they arrive in England, especially in an emergency situation?

In the good old days on Longhaul cabin crew who spoke French found themselves being rostered endless Montreal trips and in the end withdrew their 'flag'.

Yes and you got paid 50p a week extra. A friend of mine who spoke Spanish found himself on endless MIA flights and he too 'deflagged' himself.

I fly frequently on Easyjet out of Milan, to Brussels, Paris, Berlin, London, Barcelona etc. On private as well as on business trips even though my employer would not mind my taking major airlines at much higher rates.
I particularly enjoy the cabin crews who are efficient, professional, very friendly and often fun. On all my flights, I noticed that there was always at least one cc in the front and one in the back speaking the languages of origin and destination of the flights.
And I once witnessed something that really tells a lot on the working atmosphere at EZ: boarding a flight from Mxp to Brussels coming from Berlin, an EZ captain travelling as SLF, coming complete with tanned face, four stripes and a big watch stopped in the cockpit to say hi to his pals. He then introduced himself to the German senior cc before going to take a sit in the back. " Oh you're Italian" she said in English, " I'm not too good in Italian, can I call on you if I need a translator?" . "yes of course" replied the big man without any hesitation. I don't know if I would have seen the same friendly, easygoing (excuse the pun) and helpful attitude between crew members of another airline.

Airlines, including EZY, still value additional languages. Actually rostering them onto relavant flights however is just not feasible. As someone has already mentioned, 4 sector days often take in different countries plus there is additional cost in rostering flights that way in that individual crew members become inflexible.

Also, despite nightstops being few and far between at most EZY bases there is still often a preference on the types of routes crew fly and this is usually, but not exclusively, associated with how lucrative they are both in sector pay and commission. As a result some crew would be left with routes they didn't necassarilly want whilst also potentially being out of pocket.

That said there are plenty of foreign speakers right across the UK network who i'm sure probably see fairly frequent service to destinations where their language can be put to good use whilst those crew based in CDG, ORY, LYS, MAD, BSL, GVA, SXF, MXP, FCO and soon LIS, do have to speak English plus the language of their home base.

Quoting yggorf: I particularly enjoy the cabin crews who are efficient, professional, very friendly and often fun.

I totally agree. As I mentioned, I dont mean to have a go at the Cabin crew on the airlines I mentioned. I'm not a regular flyer, just about 3 or 4 times a year. Maybe the experiences I mentioned weren't representative.

Thanks to all for your perspective. With regard to the lack of Italian on the display screens at the check-in desks (ie. the part of my post that isnt relevant to this forum:) ), I do think that this could be easily sorted by the airlines. Maybe because of the standard use of English in the aviation industry, management of airlines think that they don't need to cater for the old lady who is visiting her son in London once a year.
(again, any criticism in this post is directed at the management of the companies, not you guys in cabin crew;) )

I fly a lot on easyJet. One of the reasons I do so is because I enjoy the friendly and yet professional attitude of the staff. They are not always the cheapest but are often the best choice on many routes.

However, the most spoken Second language in Europe is English

Food for thoughts: in Europe the first language spoken (native speakers) is german, second is french, english coming only third!
Actually the most spoken first language in Europe is Russian, about 132m in European Russia and native Russian speakers in Belarus and Ukraine (there are another 30m in Asian Russia), plus sizeable groups in Latvia, etc, whereas Germany, Austria, and the German-speaking part of Switzerland are about 95m total.

inaspinorspiraldive
Not quite sure what you are trying to imply here.

I feel sorry for you, you SOOOO completely missed the point made by jensdad..
I don't need your sympathy, but what is the point that you think I SOOOO completely missed (if you have to use that teenage writing style in an attempt to convey your point)?

And "I flew MAD - AMS on Iberia"? So perfect hey!? Looks like you made it up (including the dialogue with the FA) in order to reply this thread, just saying...
Why is it 'perfect'?
Why would I 'make up' a dialogue to reply to the thread?
In case you missed it, the point I was making is that this particular crew member spoke neither Dutch nor English. The announcements were made in Spanish and Spanglish and were almost unintelligible.

Iberia very obviously makes more efforts concerning foreigner languages than BA!
That is at variance with my observations, based on many IB flights, that most of their crews have little no more than rudimentary knowledge of any language other than Spanish. BA on the other hand tend to employ cabin crew proficient on the languages of the route operated and usually several others.

Jensdad has a point.
Which, in your view, is what?

Recently I flew BHX / FRA using LH, on a flight operated by bmi.

There was just one cabin crew member who spoke German, and even to my (english) ear her German wasn't up to the mark - the safety announcement was barely intelligable, the pronounciation was so bad.

Surely Lufthansa would expect better.

On the otherhand, it is amazing to hear UK (British) KLM cabin crew speaking Dutch so fluently.

We British need to start learning European languages, not just to work as CC, but also to help UK plc export!

That certainly is my reaction to this thread.

I remember that I fairly recently raised the issue on part of these boards of what if any EU rules exist to oblige airlines to roster cabin crews who are able to express themselves in the languages of the arrival and destinations towns of the flight.

The answer was "none."

Apart from issues of lack of commission from trolleys, of 50p per week as a bonus or of dinky little flags, not to mention the aimiabilty of cabin crew on this named airline or on that, the concept of an emergency in these anarchic conditions does not bear thinking about.

Presumably, as always, this will be rectified in the future; after some (many many ?) poor blighters have died or been maimed for this basic reason.

And to think that today in the UK the Prime Minister gave a speech about responsible and compassionate capitalism. Not much sign of that in the under-regulated dog eat dog airline business we currently have.

Things have certainly changed. in the 1970's I took a flight on JAL (my first on a 747) which was routed HRW, CPH, ANC and on to Tokyo. All announcements were made in the laguage of: the departure airport/ the arrival airport and (of course) Japanese. So on the first two legs we were treated to English, Danish and Japanese. I deplaned at Anchorage but I assume that Danish was dropped from then on.

More recently I found the French airlines notable for the non-use of English, (No surprise there then).

Yes, I agree from what I have heard that Easyjet are a very good airline - also Aer Lingus - coming back to DUB from MAN to see family (I live & work in MAN) it is a joy to hear my Native Irish Gaelic on the flight back xxxxx

That certainly is my reaction to this thread.

I remember that I fairly recently raised the issue on part of these boards of what if any EU rules exist to oblige airlines to roster cabin crews who are able to express themselves in the languages of the arrival and destinations towns of the flight.

The answer was "none."

Apart from issues of lack of commission from trolleys, of 50p per week as a bonus or of dinky little flags, not to mention the aimiabilty of cabin crew on this named airline or on that, the concept of an emergency in these anarchic conditions does not bear thinking about.

Presumably, as always, this will be rectified in the future; after some (many many ?) poor blighters have died or been maimed for this basic reason.

And to think that today in the UK the Prime Minister gave a speech about responsible and compassionate capitalism. Not much sign of that in the under-regulated dog eat dog airline business we currently have. Most aircraft have language PA's along side English that can be played in an emergency. Commands use strong positive body language along side words (usually not enough time when shouting commands to do it in two languages) and in preparation for an emergency landing we would most certainly get the message across......it really wouldn't be too difficult. The picture you paint is, quite frankly, rubbish and from past incidents there is nothing to support your claim.

If you will countenance another comment from SLF, I noticed that on LH planes, there is this list next to the phone receiver for cabin announcements, of which buttons to press for the recorded announcements in various languages. I'm not 100% sure whether it's actually used on all international flights, but this would seem to take care of at least the everyday security needs. Not the G&T of course and probably not an emergency, but that's another matter. Anyway, in an acute emergency, I guess most communication would be simple enough that even accented language skills should suffice.

As for on-ground service, jensdad, shall we amble over to the SLF forum maybe? ;)

the concept of an emergency in these anarchic conditions does not bear thinking about
I fear you may be over dramatising this BigFrank. Believe you me, when I and my colleagues are shouting 'Brace Brace' or 'Come this way - jump jump' then it won't matter what language the individual speaks, they are going to get the message loud and clear. Our emergency procedures are designed to transcend language barriers so your assertion
after some (many many ?) poor blighters have died or been maimed for this basic reason
is likely to be if not as easyflyer83 so succinctly expressed it 'rubbish', then certainly erring towards scaremongering. I'd also like to reassure anyone thinking of sending an elderly non-english speaking relative on a journey that they will be perfectly safe, be put on the correct aircraft and looked after for the whole journey. As far as I am aware there are no lonely old ladies wandering forever lost and unnoticed around the airports of the world! But it could make a great Hollywood movie!

jensdad, in an ideal world, things would be as you describe. CC able to communicate with the pax in the pax's own language on every flight.
Most legacy airlines still put a premium on hiring cabin crew who speak more than one language, and (financially and or with making languages a requirement for promotion) stimulate their CC to speak as many languages as possible.

However, in the real world, regulations and cost-minimising are two very deciding factors,
Regulations, as in the law, used to be regarded as a minimum standard in civil aviation. Airlines used to provide a much better standard than what the law required. In most every area of the operation.
These days it is very different; many airlines view the minimum regulations regulations as the standard to strive for.

That goes for maintenance, it goes for pilot training, it goes for service standards in the cabin, for baggage handling, for the amount and quality of the food served and for most every other aspect of the business.
It is a practice commonly known among airline employees as "the race to the bottom".

Providing anything more than what the law requires adds extra costs.
Hiring people with language skills is pricier than hiring people who only speak one language. Paying your CC to add new languages or to maintain the ones they already have, costs money.
With passengers scouring the net for the cheapest tickets available, extra costs are the very LAST thing an airline is looking for.

If the pax aren´t willing to pay for it, and the law doesn´t require it, fewer and fewer airlines will be spending money on cabin crew who speak more than their native language plus English.

What does the law say?
In your example, it is a UK based airline, so we´ll limit this to European regulations.
Slightly simplified, the rules and regulations governing cabin crew are based on JAR-OPS 1.
There are no regulatory requirements regarding the minimum language skills of the individual members of the Cabin Crew. However, JAR-OPS Subpart B 1.025 “Common language” requirements does apply to all Crew members: i) an operator must ensure that all crew members can communicate in a common language and ii) an operator must ensure that all operations personnel are able to understand the language in the Operations Manual which pertain to their duties and responsibilities.

That´s it:
1) CC must have a common language
2) CC must understand their ops manual

Passengers wanting cheap seats need to realise that an airline offering those seats can and will provide nothing more than the minimum legal requirements.

Which is fair enough, since it is the only way any airline can offer those cheap seats.

That, at least, is my take on the robust nature of several replies.

It might be they reply in this way because I am talking nonsense as they claim.

Or it might be that by i) mentioning safety and ii) dicussing scenarios involving lack of communiction between staff and passengers I am mentioning something which "everyone knows about" but "polite" people prefer not to think about.

When I read the safety card and listen to the safety brief (as I did for the last time about 10 days ago) I do always wonder whether it is meaningful since if we slam into the Pyrenees we are unlikely to need our life jackets, with or without whistle and light, irrespective of whether the jacket itself be fully or partially inflated.

If however the information there might just be helpful to my family and I whether a few hundred metres east from BCN or on the tarmac at LHR, I am not convinced that the meaning and the content of shouted instructions and advice will be self evident to all passengers, especially non-English speakers, as the water laps around the door or as the choking black fumes fill the cabin.

On the other hand, should there be four or five hours available to evacuate the plane, as with the Costa Concordia, then my fears are obviously groundless as mime and improvisation will be available to supplement the unfortunate lack of language skills and EU regulations demanding them.

It might be they reply in this way because I am talking nonsense as they claim.

Your heading in the right direction.


Or it might be that by i) mentioning safety and ii) dicussing scenarios involving lack of communiction between staff and passengers I am mentioning something which "everyone knows about" but "polite" people prefer not to think about.

i) You'll find that crew quite often discuss safety/scenarios/Procedures/recent incidents on a regular basis. We're not afraid to discuss it.
ii) I can communicate well flying across Europe and North Africa and have few real issues. A little bit of Spanish helps me from time to time but believe me I reckon communicating on cabin service to be more challenging than communicating in an emergency. As you have already been told, emergency communication is predicated on short, sharp positive commands. With that in mind imagine yourself trying to communicate with someone who doesn't speak your language. a) trying to sell them a drink and a snack and b) Giving short loud commands with gesticulations (i.e actions). The former requires alot more conversational skills where as the latter needs minimal of that. I guess what I am trying to say is..... there is no issue.

I can't think of an incident where the language barrier was cited as an issue.

When I read the safety card and listen to the safety brief (as I did for the last time about 10 days ago) I do always wonder whether it is meaningful since if we slam into the Pyrenees we are unlikely to need our life jackets, with or without whistle and light, irrespective of whether the jacket itself be fully or partially inflated.

Considering the Pyrenees are a mountain range you are wise to point out that indeed lifejackets would be of little use. However if the aircraft was in the nearby Med or Bay of Biscay then the lifejackets may be of some use. Of course everyone cites the impossible nature of ditchings but there are examples of success in addition to aircraft overshoots etc at many of the worlds water edge airports.

If however the information there might just be helpful to my family and I whether a few hundred metres east from BCN or on the tarmac at LHR, I am not convinced that the meaning and the content of shouted instructions and advice will be self evident to all passengers, especially non-English speakers, as the water laps around the door or as the choking black fumes fill the cabin.


Crew commands work in conjunction with other safety procedures and equipment. Lights for instance are designed, in no small part, to help passengers in smoke filled cabins and if you are in a position where water laps around the door, your ditching will have been relatively successful. This is where you would see crews training kick in and the language barrier would be barely existent.

On the other hand, should there be four or five hours available to evacuate the plane, as with the Costa Concordia, then my fears are obviously groundless as mime and improvisation will be available to supplement the unfortunate lack of language skills and EU regulations demanding them.

Again you'll find that most incidents where evacuation takes place, passengers are evacuated exceptionally quickly.

Now I've never said that language speakers aren't handy. They are. Certainly at my airline they can really make things easier. There are lots of speakers across the UK network it's just not prudent nor practical to specifically roster them to particular flights. At out Continental bases they are required to speak the local language but pre-flight briefings, security and emergency procedures & commands are required to be spoken in English.

Think about airlines, particularly hub carriers, who also have multiple languages that originate from no where near where the flight originates or destined for. As examples, In theory both the US A320 in the Hudson and the A343 in YYZ are likely to have had passengers who's languages weren't represented on the crew. Despite that both evacuations were pretty much text book! Remember also that both of those incidents were what we call "unplanned emergencies' which basically means there were no preparation time and so those passengers had just the commands to rely on. There is no reason to suspect they weren't understood.

But even if you have a flight with a language speaker and even if it's on a small/medium jet like the A320, it's not always useful if you're at the rear of the cabin and the language speaker is at the front.

It's incredibly hard for an airline to make money especially when people have an unquenshable thirst for cheap fares but despite the cost cutting I am pretty confident that most airlines and regulatory authorities take safety very seriously and my airline can actually be quiet anal if truth be told. With that in mind I am sure the concerns over the language barrier have been discussed and looked into and deemed to not cause a safety issue.

Do I sometimes wish that we (Brits especially) were better at languages? Yes I do but as more of a courtesy rather than due to any safety concerns I have.

BigFrank, the beauty of an open bulletin board is that everybody can contribute.
On a specialised bulletin board such as this, there will be a number of professionals contributing, a number of keenly interested people bent on learning more about the subject at hand, and a number of people who enjoy voicing their opinions about subjects they clearly know very little about.

To those who do know what they are talking about, those who don´t stand out very clearly.
You may wish to give that some thought.

Just a thought from another passenger. Some years ago I was returning from Perth to the UK via Singapore, on the flight was an elderly Vietnamese lady who had been visiting her family and who spoke no English. Her family had thoughtfully provided her with some help in the form of a large lump of cardboard with the word "Hanoi" and "No speak English" written on it hung around her neck. For myself, I was horrified by this but could see the point. Fairly early on into the flight one of the cabin crew asked lady what time her flight left Singapore for Hanoi. Blank stare and shrug of shoulders was the response. The cabin crew member tried twice more with the same degree of success. Not wishing to make the CC look silly I tried a bit of lateral thinking and managed to get two possible options for the ETD. I passed this on quietly to the CC who was astounded and wanted to know how I had managed it - I speak even less Vietnamese than the lady did English. "A bit of sign language" was my response. What I had done was say "You, Hanoi?" whilst miming flapping wings, followed by more flapping wings and pointing to my watch and repeating "Hanoi?" We managed a short "conversation " which was great. She had someone who had tried to understand her. By the time we got to Singapore I knew she had several children and she knew roughly where I lived in the UK. I had a big hug from her as she left the aircraft and was delighted to see her in the safe hands of the Ground Staff. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I have had.
Would it not perhaps be a good idea to have such a scenario to deal with on a training day? Not necessarily every training day but from time to time. We had a similar task on a study day for nurses and it was most enlightening.

Would it not perhaps be a good idea to have such a scenario to deal with on a training day?

Is training really necassary for that though? I thought miming and doing actions is what us Brits are famous for. After all, how many times do we see people abroad asking for the bill with the obligatory scribble in the air. I've certainly used your tac-tics before. Some feel a bit self conscious doing it but if it gets the message across.

D X Wombat, you've obviously never seen the Cabin crew miming 'chicken, fish or beef'! You would know then just how great our miming skills are. As to training, we do have some different scenarios for new crew to practice and some do require miming and other random acting.

I once had an unscheduled night stop in Abidjan with a 747 full of Nigerians and a couple of gentlemen who spoke only mandarin. We looked after those two for 36 hours without actually managing to exchange a single word and still got them to the hotel, fed them and got them back on the plane to LHR. I am sure they still think it was an all inclusive tour.

Ottergirl :ok:

Venison or chicken, 24 Japanese salarymen, none of whom spoke anything but.

I ended up doing Bambi on ice in the aisle.

They applauded politely.

And then had the chicken.

To be fair, that was the only time I have ever seen the need for any miming and I got the impression that this particular group of cabin crew were just not interested in even trying to help the lady - something I had not seen before or, thankfully, since. The lady was a foreigner who didn't speak English, didn't appear to be wealthy. It was the complete lack of effort on the part of everyone, not just the particular crew member, combined with an uneasy feeling that she was simply regarded as a lesser being and therefore not worth bothering with, which made me wonder if they had ever had any training in such matters, hence my suggestion. Should I ever be in that situation again I would exactly the same but do it when the particular person could both see and hear me - politely of course, and hope my message that any effort made by her was particularly poor and simply needed a tiny bit of effort. I KNOW you have a difficult job at times and people are not always as polite and well behaved as they should be but this was simply a case of the lady being unable to understand not being ignorant and it made me cross. Oh, and before anyone asks, it wasn't BA. ;)
Juud, I wish I had been there to see that. :ok:

Talk about miming reminds me of one of my trips to Moscow. I avoid international restaurants with menus in 16 languages of the 'We speke Anglish -Wirr sprecken Duetsch - Oons prat Nederland - Nos parlez Francas - Hablos España' type.

I found myself in a little cozy place off Tverskaya with menus only in Russian and of course only in Cyrillic. I can read the Cyrillic alphabet but mostly don't know what the words mean. So I'm reading out the words and the lovely waitress is laughing at my pronounciation but then goes into the 'charades' making animal noises to tell me what I might be eating. The whole restaurant explodes into laughter and soon I'm invited to a table with a doctor who speaks Spanish (from working in Cuba), and his family, and I'm eventually invited to their home. What a lovely experience.

I ended up doing Bambi on ice in the aisle.

Decades ago whilst on a 5 day Tokyo, some of us went into a local restaurant, and because in those days hardly anyone spoke English they would have a plastic model of the the meals, dessert drinks etc. So if you fancied steak chips and a beer you would go to the counter and point to the appropriate model. Then 20 mins later the real steak would arrive.

One of my more brainy friends then decided to go to his local 'Early learning Centre' and bought a plastic cow and chicken and would take it on Tokyo flights, stick it on the meal trolley and use the models appropriately. There was never any problem during the meal service. However when BA changed the menu, I'm not sure what happened after that.

Nowadays if that method was used I would see a problem if security pulled out a model and ask what is it? :D

Those 300 crew who spoke say Italian were not really wanting to spend their whole career operating to places that they already knew, they wanted (unsurprisingly) to see the world.
Yeah, but - in addition to the required CC potential, they were recruited specifically for their language skills. They couldn't then complain if they spent their life doing Rome and Milan.
Did our Japanese CC operate on other routes?