Cabin announcement languages

[Espada III]

I flew Air Berlin from Dusseldorf to Venice this summer. All annoucements in German and English (although cockpit announcements in English were rather rushed).

Is this standard procedure? I was pleasantly surprised.

[easyflyer83]

Generally English will be used on most flights, it being the aviation language, in addition to the language of the country the airline is based and sometimes the language of the destination.

[Load Toad]

...so in East Asia CX for example will have to make announcements in English, Cantonese, Mandarin & the language of the country they are flying to.

[ExXB]

At a minimum the language used for safety briefings should be language of the departure airport, the language of arrival airport and English.

If audio/video presentations are being made the cabin crew should ensure that the cabin is prepared for the briefing. i.e. all passengers seated and advised to pay attention.

The largest airline in Geneva, on UK registered aircraft, play a tape in french while passengers are still on their feet and attending to their hand luggage etc. Then they give a demonstration in English (often spoken much too quickly, and in broad accents) On their Swiss registered aircraft they give the demonstration in French, German and English.

Other announcements are less critical, particularly those trying to sell you 'scratch-cards'.

[safelife]

Legally the announcements have to be made in an ICAO language. German isn't an ICAO language, so the most sensible option is to repeat it in English.
But they COULD use Chinese or Russian instead ;)

[easyflyer83]

ExxB

The French demo these days should be played once doors are closed. But old habits die hard and with there being no actions then people can usually still listen in. Strictly speaking, a foreign demo/tape is not obligatory but we always strive to do one and so doing it then on occasions can help when there's a short taxi out. It's much better than some airlines who play the foreign after take off. I.e American.

Broad accents. Nothing can be done about that and is an age old problem. I had difficulty understanding announcements on a QR flight yesterday and they too occasionally have to do manual demo. I also find some carriers play the video way too quietly.

With EZY you may be interested to Know that the English demo is only being read whilst the automated PA's are being updated so the reassuring queens English accent of Phil Gayle (of big breakfast news fame) will be back with you shortly.

[xanda_man]

I flew Iberia recently on a BA codeshare ticket on the MAD-LHR route. All cabin announcements from the cabin crew were in both English and Spanish with the English element being very very rushed and quite broken phrasing.

There were announcements from the flight deck but this was only in Spanish.

I don't particularly mind but the rushed English was tricky to understand at times meaning I didn't really know what each announcement intended. Thankfully I know a little Spanish (aside from 'dos cervezas por favor') so I could fill the gaps.

These bloody foreigners eh - not speaking the lingo of our good ol' blighty eh! ;)

[easyflyer83]

Absolutely. I'm as guilty as the next person but if English wasn't the language of aviation then we'd be :mad:

[PAXboy]

In June, I did two sectors on Wizz 9first time with them) and the PAs from CC were almost unintelligble. They were manually delivered in three languages and I would have liked to know if the other language listenners fared any better.

The FC spoke very good English.

[onetrack]

I flew Turkish Airlines from SIN to IST and the Turkish announcements were about 3 minutes long, whilst the following English announcements were about 10 seconds long.

Either Turkish is a complex language that can be translated to English with a minimal amount of English words, or TK only pay lip service to the English language, and believe that Turkish should be the worlds premier language, in the same way as the French believe that French should be the worlds premier language.

Every major engineering science and technology course has as its source, the English language. English is the language of engineering, science and technology, and it is always recommended that you have a very good grasp of the English language if you wish to make your way in any form of engineering, science and technology career.

[+TSRA]

Tongue-in-cheek of course, but I would argue that every mathematical, science, and technology course has its roots in Latin or Greek with English being the current working language!

Here in Canada an airline is regulated to play both English and French. There are some airlines, like Air Canada, which give equal service through their on-screen presentations. Then there are some other airlines which give lip service to French (predominately west of Ontario) and then there are those which give lip service to English (typically Quebec). By the sounds of things, other countries do the same.

I've not travelled internationally with Air Canada, but flying KLM and Martinair from YYZ I've sat through English, French, Dutch, and German. Air New Zealand from memory was English only out of AKL, YVR, LAX, SFO, and HNL. United has only ever been English the times I've been on.

I guess at the end of the day, that's why the Safety Features Cards are all diagrams - if you don't understand the language you'll certainly understand a circle with a line through it.

[Basil]

A member of my extended family is a Spanish lady who is a professor of chemistry at a British university.
She lectures all over the world and, when lecturing in Spain, I was surprised to learn that she uses English. She says that, since her day to day work is in English, she feels more comfortable using English technical terms.

[Hotel Tango]

What disturbs me more than anything is the sometimes extremely poor delivery, even in their own language. The Americans like to make it a race and see how many words per second they can manage! Foreigners whose mother tongue is not English can also often rush their announcements making them totally unintelligible. I have come across plenty of good examples by foreigners too of course. In fact on some occasions I even made a point of praising the person for their very clear PA. The worst PA I recently experienced came from the captain. He must have held the mike about a foot from his mouth and proceeded to mumble his way through both in his native (German) tongue and English!

[Basil]

I regret to say that some of the first language English speaker flight deck announcements I've recently heard have been pretty dire.

[Basil]

I had a Dutch colleague who moved to the UK in 1963 and, as a result, his Dutch language skills suffered. He was on one of his occasional visits to Holland and was complimented on his Dutch. He said "Well of course I can speak it; I AM Dutch!" The other guy responded "Then you should be ashamed of yourself!" :)

[munster]

I'll second paxboy's comment. The Wizzair crews appear to be ex horse racing commentators!