PPRuNe Forums - Novel PA announcements as to why your flight was late departing

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- - Novel PA announcements as to why your flight was late departing (https://www.pprune.org/passengers-slf-self-loading-freight/387986-novel-pa-announcements-why-your-flight-late-departing.html)

Quote:

The strangest announcement I had was when our departure from ST Lucia was delayed.....

"We are going to be a delayed a few minutes as the handler has loaded our cargo of bananas into the wrong hold and they would freeze if we do not move them"

What is so strange about that?

ISM bursts into song

CX departure from Cebu, Philippines last Friday night, the aircraft suffered a brake malfunction and we returned to the apron. After a brief announcement from the FD to advise us of the issue, the ISM (I think it was the ISM) came on the PA and sang a ditty to the melody of the famous John Denver song - "We're not leaving on a jet plane, engineers please fix our brakes" (and so on). It must have relieved any tension that some pax might have been suffering due to the non-departure and it received a warm response and round of applause from all the passengers.

Sadly, after 3 hours (an a nice dinner on the aircraft!) the problem couldn't be solved and we deplaned. Well done CX Cebu (as usual) for the superb handling under difficult circumstances. Everyone was well looked after and dispatched to hotels until the morning when the spares arrived. They really showed how it should be done. :D :ok:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Di_Vosh (Post 5191913)

No airline will EVER make an announcement like:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome aboard our 7:00 pm flight to xxx. We apologise for the delay, but this was caused by a delay to the flight last night, which required that the crew who flew the first flight of the day to be 15 minutes late to work due to flight and duty considerations. Because we don't operate with a backup crew, we couldn't avoid the 15 minute delay. Because we have minimum turnaround times at all of our airports, we've not been able to make up the 15 minutes in the 7 sectors today that the aircraft has flown. So are 15 minutes late now, etc"

So we say "Late due to late arrival of inbound aircraft". It's NOT a lie, and doesn't burden the passengers with a lot of stuff that most of them either wouldn't understand or care about.

Cheers,

DIVOSH!

Well, on EI on at least one occasion I've heard (after boarding a delayed afternoon flight in Dublin) something along the lines of "Ladies and gentlemen, sorry for the delay. This aircraft has just returned from AMS. It picked up a delay first thing this morning due to fog in XXX, which in turn led to an ATC delay on its way into AMS earlier this afternoon, and despite our best efforts it hasn't been possible to make up the time."

Now for this SLF at least, that's a perfectly reasonable explanation, infinitely better than "late arrival of incoming aircraft". Of course that level of detail may not always be available, but if it is, it does away with my feeling that basically no-one gives a damn [I'm not referring to EI here, more a general rant about uncaring customer service] and they're trotting out the "late arrival of incoming" line the way they would mindlessly say "we apologise for this 2-hour delay and hope that it has not caused you any inconvenience..."

On an Easyjet flight, Nice to LTN, in Autumn 2002.

Everyone on board in good time, all in their seats and behaving themselves and the doors ready to be shut 10 mins before scheduled departure time. Since I was on my way home from a v. nice holiday, this was great as obviously going home is the hard bit.

Sat there for a further 20 mins, then Captain emerges from flight deck. Picks up the PA mic and announces, somewhat sheepishly, that he, the crew, us, and all our luggage are on the wrong aircraft. The one we were on had to be in Liverpool for a scheduled maintenance check that night - 'our' aircraft was the EZY one at the next gate!:uhoh:

To his credit, and by his own admission, he didn't want to hide on the flight deck to give us the bad news. To EZY's credit, we were all swapped over and ready to go in about 45 mins.

This is a true story, I kid ye not.

EK out of Tehran a few years ago. Taxiway was extremely bumpy. Might have contributed .....
Lined up for TO, revved up, immediate shutdown. Belgian Captain announced in heavily accented English that he'd lost the nose wheel steering and we'd go back to the terminal using the aviation equivalent of handbrake turns.
Eventually he came back on and said it couldn't be fixed there but Airbus procedures permitted both TO and Landing without it. Most of the PAX didn't speak English at all ( far less Belglish ) so were blissfully unaware of what was going on.
My most gentle landing ever in DXB :Dand a tow in all the way from the end of the runway