sydney domestic,
You may be interested to learn that there are serious medical and safety issues that occur in regular bases on our international flights.
The ability to comunicate with WHOLE CABINS of non english speaker passengers in these situations does come in handy.
Could you imagine what it would be like for a plane load of Japanese passengers departing Tokyo expecting a 9 hour flight to Perth suddenly finding themselves in an emergency decent with NO ONE on board able to communicate to them what is happening?
Qantas's choice to operate without them to save money is negligent in the extreme....................
The following is a cut and paste from the D&G forum. I assume it was from a pilot and it may help you to understand the need for language speaking FA's on international sectors.
Quote-
t was cost cutting regarding the language speakers on the PERTH TOKYO Flight.
Perth Longhaul have been flying the Tokyo trips for the best part of 3-4 years now. In nearly all cases 2 or 3 Japanese speakers are planned as crew - this obviously helps customer service and in the event of an emergency helps significantly. An incident on a Melbourne Tokyo QANTAS flight highlighted this (there were no language speakers on board when the aircaft had to divert) , and as a result the Japanese language speakers were returned to these services.
In the last bid periods out of Perth, this bid period inclusive and particularly the Tokyo Perth Flight that this incident has just occured on, the flights have been crewed by Short Haul Perth based cabin crew -they are much cheaper to use on long flights with large transits (ie 80 hours). This change is a direct result of cost cutting (and their FAAA. In so doing there are no Japanese language speakers on board as part of the normal crew compliment. In all of QANTAS's wisdom, after the short haul crew on these services started serving Japanese meals for dinner instead of breakfast along with a few other stuff ups, they realised that yet again they needed language speakers on board. So QANTAS's short term money saving solution has been to have a short haul crew complimented by 1 long haul crew language speaker (instead of the minimum 2 normally used). This 1 extra crew member is purely for PAs etc and are treated as a "Sherpa".
In this particular incident, the Sherpa had gone sick in Japan.
The only language speaker on board was an off duty Long haul Perth based Japanese cabin crew who was paxing home from his family in Japan."
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What people like yourself [domestics] don't seem to understand re the international flying that you now do is that in rushing to undercut your INTERNATIONAL collegues you have set a precedent for the non payment of overseas allowance that is { for a scheduled carrier} a world first.
You got the work by undercutting the incumbents which makes you effectively SCABS.
Look up the definition and tell me I'm wrong.
Thai,SQ,LH,BA,AO etc, pay their aircrew allowances on arrival as does EVERY other scheduled carrier.
Many pay their crew FAR more than QF pays us at longhaul.
It's new and your excited about being overseas and perhaps you feel that your destination is enough compensation but wake up and smell the coffee.
YOU ARE AT WORK AND AWAY FROM HOME.
YOU HAVE UNDERCUT THE INCUMBENTS AND EFFECTIVELY UNDERMINED THE INDUSTRY AS A WHOLE.
YOU HAVE SET A DANGEROUS PRECEDENT.
YOU ARE BEING SCREWED.
I'd be talking en-masse with the shorthaul FAAA if I were you.
SYD-DRW-BOM should run out at around 15 hours on an A330 with no horizontal crew rest....................No Cashcard machines that I can recall in Mumbai....................
Last edited by mostie; 7th Sep 2005 at 11:19.