No English Announcements - Finally!

[graraps]

Originally Posted by Unimatrix One

Example: I once flew NRT-ICN on JAL, and the announcements were only in Japanese and English -- no Korean!

I flew JAL GMP-HND 3 weeks ago, and all announcements were also made in Korean (by a live flight attendant).

[GordonGordon]

Originally Posted by GWU ESIA STUDENT

If not English what language would you suggest as a common language?

perhaps body language

[Crazyhotelguy]

Originally Posted by GordonGordon

perhaps body language

They could always hire a mime.....

[You want to go where?]

Originally Posted by choster

The small portion of the world population that can afford to fly is a population for whom English is neither exotic nor particularly unusual. If you associate English with "home" too much and really want to get away from it, don't fly. Take the bus or hitchhike.

As a percentage of the world population, the portion may be small, but as a total number, there are very many people who fly who may not think English exotic or unusual, but would not understand a safety instruction given in English.

As to airlines not giving the instruction in English, I have flown Royal Air Maroc both domestically, and internationally in Africa (not to English-speaking countries) where the instruction was only given in French and Arabic.

[grahamb]

To the OP, I think this is an interesting conversation subject and that some people are reading more into it than you probably intended

Originally Posted by Finite Elephant

On Topic, I was on a KE flight SEL (Gimpo)-CJU where all the announcements were in Korean. I was pretty likely the only person aboard not fluent in Korean. I was definitely the only non-Asian.

I did a KE flight from SEL to PUS where I'm fairly sure my colleague and I were the only non-Koreans on the flight but they did the full safety demonstration in both Korean and English. I did that flight a few times but there were generally more non-Koreans on the flights.

The only time I can remember flights being completely non-English were domestic Chinese flights back in the late-90s. I assume that they do the safety demonstration in English now.

[KNRG]

Interesting note.. A recent KLM flight VCE-AMS made annoucements in Dutch and English, but they spoke to anyone in the cabin in Italian or German as well. Flight crew announcements were only in English.

Edit to add: Anyone else find it eerie that in the First/Biz cabin the crew knows to address you in the right language on flights? To CDG every other person around me spoke French and I didn't say a word, but the FA looked at her sheet and said "Hello Mr. KNRG! Welcome to.." and coming back from AMS the person next to me spoke German, the couple infront of me Dutch, and right on cue English for myself.