g.

Some airlines - particularly Lufthansa - cockpit crews spend far too long waffling on in multiple languages introducing themselves and the cabin crew, blabbing on about the altitude they will be flying at, how fast the aeroplane goes, what route they will be taking, whats for dinner etc. One one flight, the evidently infrequent flyer behind said "I wish this captain would just shut up and concentrate on flying the plane!" I couldn't agree more.

Quite possibly captain would have been far too busy sorting out consequences of delayed flight and just delegated the announcement to cabin crew - nothing wrong with that.

I also though that the hostesses wording was just fine - you are going to die if you don't take the ice of the wings. Nothing wrong with saying out loud the truth.

Hilarious when presented with a camp delivery :D

My personal favourite, from a Libyan Arab Republic Airlines internal flight in the days of the late unlamented Colonel Gaddafi:

"We trust you have had a pleasant fright, and will come to fry with us again!"

It's more publicity that RYR don't have to pay for... MOL will be pleased no?!


Whilst I don't necessarily agree with what she said or the way she said it, nobody was harmed as a result, it's unlikely she caused undue concern to any passengers either, mostly they just seem surprised.

But she's obviously not English so it may have sounded better in her head before she translated to a second language.

Sounds like the skipper got on the PA pretty quick but of course the video conveniently cuts out that bit.

On the life jacket...
and a light should you wish to read...

I liked the tale of a Virgin Atlantic chief stewardess (or whatever the current PC term is), who announced that due to a short turn round time, they needed volunteers to assist in tidying up the cabin -and anyone wishing to volunteer could make themselves known to the cabin crew by standing up before the belt signs had been switched off!

It must be so tempting to say "Please pay careful attention to our safety brief as questions will be asked afterwards. Any passenger unable to provide a correct answer may be off-loaded....."

. . . and then there is this:

My favourite safety briefing: The lifejacket is fitted with a flashing light, which will be great if we crash into a disco" I use Ryanair a lot, and it is perfectly OK if you treat it as the airborne version of National Express. My only worry is the standard of English amongst the cabin crew, especially in an emergency

Passing Sailors
 

I was captain on that BMI flight Leeds to somewhere. The steward was an amusing chap who liked to camp it a bit. Most passengers thought he was great, I agreed. He had a marvelous ability to take the mickey out of himself without seeming silly. His male name was easily transferred to a similar female alternative which we all used and he responded with the appropriate level of respect for his captain, S.. O.. Sir.

Yes, that might be a problem if you are British;)

Jesus. Some people really have a problem, don't they?

Perhaps, flydrive, with a little thought it might occur to you - eventually - that poor English is more likely to bamboozle non-native speakers than the British who will probably understand no matter how badly mangled the language. They'll merely be offended or upset to some degree by the mangling of their language while those who struggle to understand good English simply won't understand the mangled variety at all. So don't we, as English speaking aircrew, owe a duty of care to our non-native English speaking pax to ensure we speak good, grammatical English so the poor pax stand a chance of understanding it? To do otherwise is simply unprofessional and may well have serious safety implications too.

Bit of a no brainer, really, isn't it?

Man, now I have upset you, I'm so sorry.

By the way, looks like your English is not that good if you cannot read my nickname correctly;)

You might be surprised to learn that many passengers do not speak any English and perhaps instructions in their language might help them more.

Maybe we should introduce a language proficiency test for passengers too;)

Why? If it's an emergency they only need a few phrases. Either they're telling you to sit down and adopt the brace condition or evacuate. No point in telling people not to take their cabin baggage along because that'll be ignored anyway.

Anything else relevant will have been covered in the safety briefing :E

She done okay
 

I'm always happy to sit in the cabin of an airliner crewed by people who don't want to die. :ok:

Wageslave,

On the contrary, it are mostly the British who have trouble adapting to other non-native accents. Non-native speakers tend to understand better other non-native speakers.
That is a known fact and I see that daily.

re possible Aussie cabin crew, a friend of mine, Aussie, was a doctor in India, and he'd say to the patient 'you are going home today" and then wonder why they blanched. Eventually he worked out they were hearing 'to die".