At least the VB cabin crew are trying to inject a little enjoyment into air travel these days. The last flight (all those years ago) I had on Qantas, the crew were a sullen, uninterested lot, who made it obvious we "SLF" were a nuisance.

The cabin crew spent their time talking about their terms and conditions and their holiday plans. When I intruded into the galley to ask for a glass of water, they made it quite obvious that I was a nuisance.

That was on LAX - MEL, business class, and also a long time before I had a PPL either.

To put it another way, the QF cabin crew were just "going through the motions" of proviiding service, and believe it or not us poor ignorant "Self Loading Freight" can actually tell the difference between someone who is actually interested in providing us with a pleasant flying expereince, and the rest.

To be fair to Qantas, I saw some fantastic cabin crew service in the mid 70's. What caused all that enthusiasm to evaporate???

One of the nicer things about VB is that they do care about semantics - calling us "Customers" which underlines the reason I prefer them.

QF has never shaken off it's Public Service mentality. Always was a problem & it seems to be passed on to each new generation of FA's & ground staff.:rolleyes:

The Qantas crew were probably right, Sunfish. You ARE a nuisance.

Absolutely - I agree 100%! Which is why, IF the safety demo was delivered as you say, you should report it to the company so the individual concerned can be 'performance managed'...

Bulla mate Yeah I do work for DJ, have done for about 4.5 years. I can gaurentee you now the vast majority of crew have toned it down since when we first started - at that time we were encouraged to make it a bit of a laugh - a lot more antics than you get onboard these days. The idea of Virgin Flair is to make the flight memorable in a good way for each passenger - that does not necessarily mean forcing 180 pax into a group activity -it can come down to the little things like sitting and chatting with the little old lady, or making sure Mr Jones who is running late for his meeting has the chance to have an expedited departure from the a/c upon arrival.

Re The window blinds thing, again no apology being made for what is part of our safety requirements.

And finally, again IF this flight really did occur as you say, and especially at this time of day (when one would presume the flight was full of businesspeople and others who just wanted some quiet time and a cup of coffee) then say something to the company instead of getting on here and whining about it - as I tell my crew, be proactive rather than reactive! :ok:

Sinala1. I'm way ahead of you. I sent correspondence via the Virgin website and made a couple of recommendations. Received a pleasant reply to say they are looking into it - which is all I asked. CASA were also interested stating they had been concerned about the frivolity for some time. They also said the window blinds raised on all windows is nonsense.

The success of Virgin Blue in Australia is undoubted, so the company must be doing something right. Whether or not that means the FA pansy antics pays off, or the all around Virgin image is successful in getting bums in seats I don't know. Could also be the cheap fares and on time performance. Surely it wouldn't be the attractiveness or otherwise of the male FA's? Whatever turns you on, I guess.

I also have a suggestion for you (pilot?)that may enhance passenger comfort when the window blinds are raised on descent. You have my permission to pass it on to your cabin services department and I don't mind in the least if you take credit for the idea which I think is brilliant. Issue each passenger with sun-glasses or sleep masks to keep the sun out of their eyes. Company policy is oviously to allow the FA's to make peurile fun of safety announcements and to raise the window blinds for "safety". Both are crap.

Sounds like you could do with a Virgin Enema kit!!:ouch:

Well Timed Humour.
 

As self loading frieght on a recent QF flight into KTA I witnessed a very appropriate bit of PA humour. The 73 had landed a bit long and had also been dropped on Navy style by one of the drivers up front. This was followed by a fair bit of reverse thrust and lots of braking.
As we exited the runway a sweet lady's voice piped up on the PA.
"Ladies and gentlemen Qantas would like to welcome you to Karratha where the temperature is 28 degrees. (pause..........) We were going to shoot through but decided we would just drop in for a while".
This anouncement was met with appause and cheering. Timing is everything!

I have a much better idea - bring your own! :) :ok: And even then, you will still be asked to take it off for landing anyway - we want you to be able to see where you are going in an evacuation! You may well say that the chances of an evac are very low, which they are - but tell me ANY passenger or crew member who has been turned up for a flight knowing that that day would be the day that the poo would hit the proverbial... Flight attendants prepare the cabin with the mindset that that take off or landing may well be the one that requires an evac.

Every airline that I have worked for has had this policy in place - why dont you have a chat with any flight attendant who has ever been involved in an evacuation, and ask them if they were able to gauge an accurate perception of what the conditions were like outside their door, and in the area they are about to send potentially hundreds of panicked, screaming, clueless passengers. The chances are, they would have said they can see very little. 99.99% of pax are happy with the reasoning they recieve re raising their windowblinds, and VERY few ever question it let alone argue the point. Those who do question it are usually just curious as to why.

The safety demo, as mentioned in a previous post, is a 100% no-go area for any humour - this is a company ruling, based on advice from CASA. Other announcements inflight (eg turning off electronic equipment) are allowed to have 'personality' injected into them, however the key is Within Reason and the obvious one - choose your audience! This is allowed, so long as the message delivered is still clear and understandable.

Great, I hope they deal with it and get back to you - let us know the outcome!

Not yet - currently I am one of the
Although I think I definately fall under the 'otherwise' section :{ :O

Thank God we don't have LCC Ryanair operating in Oz!

THE budget airline Ryanair is ordering a fleet of stripped-down planes to cut the remaining “frills” from its service. Out will go reclining seats, window blinds, head rests, seat pockets and other “non-essentials”.
O’Leary is ordering the changes to a fleet of aircraft from Boeing. Ryanair now has to fix about 40 broken reclining seats on each plane every year.

By replacing them with non-adjustable ones, the airline hopes to save more than £1.3m.

Removing window blinds from planes on order will deliver a saving of about £130,000 for each plane, while ditching seat pockets will reduce cleaning costs and shorten the time in which planes are turned around.

The airline aims to save a further £100,000 by removing Velcro headrests, and could generate the same again by replacing them with ones that could be paid for by advertisers.

Best not to complain too much about Virgin Blue.:ok:

KTA happens to be a narrow, short runway for 737s. Most guys tend to dump it on for good reason.

I must say, personally I've never heard them "trivialise" the safety announcement... only the ancillary announcements... the welcome, the non-smoking etc.

With regard to Ryanair, I managed to download a documentary from British TV off the internet, which looked into the somewhat dubious practices of this particular airline....

http://www.channel4.com/news/microsi...aught_napping/

If anyone's interested, PM me for the deets of how to download...

I suppose Ryan Air could also save weight by reducing the captain's four stripes to one and make the F/O's three stripes just one really thin one like a Pilot Officer in the RAF. All the cabin crew could wear skirts to save trouser legs. And during cruise all the cabin crew could congregate right down the back which would give an aft Cof G and thus save fuel. Happens in some airlines, too.

Or maybe they could have the Captain's ego surgically removed. Then they wouldn't need the F/O there to massage it. That would save weight and move the CG aft! :E:E

Regardless of what the cabin crews look like they are primarily there for SAFETY. You can't help but think that some of them would not be up to coping very well in an emergency. Some of the QF ladies have such artificially cultured accents, it's hard to imagine them screaming "jump and sit" as they evacuate the pax via the suitably "armed and cross check"-ed doors.

Eliminating most of the pa annoucements is what is called for.

eg - Driver: Would the Cabin crew prepare the cabin for landing.
F/A: The captain has asked us to prepare the cabin for landing.......!!

As for "dimming the lights for take-off" in broad daylight! Perhaps we need all the power we can get to become airborne!

They go on and on!

AS for the pilots (drivers) - ETA and weather on the ground at destination is all we need - forget "we are climbimg......" , "to the left you can see...."

Perhaps this is a hold over from the early days when there was no in flight entertainment and passengers where interested to know what town/city they were flying over... and flight crew were scared of the PA microphone!! Nowadays the passengers are more interested in Pacman... or is that out of date now. This getting old sucks!!!

You guys are worried about stupid PA's, whilst our working conditions and pay erode right in front of our eyes, no wonder where all in the S@#T!

I have also experienced unprofessional Safety Announcements on National Jet. Whilst I have only flown with them 4 times, on 3 of them the safety annoucements have been a joke. In one instance the Cabin Manager (who looked about 19!) was trying to crack jokes through the whole routine and making jokes about the other FA's. The whole routine look like a circus. Had the pleasure of flying with him twice and both safety announcements would have been unacceptable if you were being audited by CASA. The other time was an all girl crew who were trying to make the Cabin director laugh during the safety announcement and were fairly successfull at it too.
All in all fairly unprofessional. Always wondered how these people would go if they had to really evac the aircraft and put the jackets on etc.

Only flown with Virgin twice and both times the PA's were professionally done. Also caught up with all the cabin crew goss as I was in the last row and heard everything that was said during the cruise while they were all sitting around during nothing :E :E

Making the person giving the PA laugh so it comes over the air is not new. Happened in a Virgin cockpit where the captain was teasing the F/O to cause him to giggle during the F/O's PA by momentarily actuating the fire warning test switch causing consternation among the FA down the back when they heard the bell in the background. The time is well overdue for our esteemed Regulator to crack down hard on this childish nonsense. But there again perhaps there is no law against it. But for heaven sake, this peurile attempt at joking would have the comedians thrown off the stage in vaudeville.

This reminded me of a classic heard waiting in the terminal in KTA as they were trying to fix a tech 146.

'Ladies and Gentlemen, sorry for the continued delay. The Captain is still trying to decide if the aircraft is safe to fly or not. We will keep you informed of any further developments. Thankyou.':eek: :eek: :eek:


Another from a now defuncted Indonesian airline. (3 seats four masks)

'.....please ensure you fit your own mask before fitting your children. Unfortunately if you have more than one child you will have to decide which one you love the most':ok:


I think a little humour can be a good thing as it does attract the attention of the passengers. Unfortunately I do think Virgin does go overboard at times, they have to remember they are catering for all types of people and some may not see the funny side of it.

Sorry I don't have the time nor inclination to trawl through all these threads. What I do know is some of you carry on with a load of c#*p or need to get a life - or both.

The VB cabin services are under review, end of story. the Virgin flair will remain, however somewhat diluted as the business passengers are further encouraged to fly on the red jets.