Over-reliance on English language
(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...)