Originally Posted by
pptp
In my opinion, it has absolutely nothing to do with comfort or respect. It's simply an amenity that has a dollar value attached to it since speakers are paid more. As with all amenities, CO weighs the cost benefit versus the negative impact of omitting it. Whichever makes/saves more money wins! Business 101
I agree with you in principle--CO does what it must to make $$. Fair enough. But for those Indians who don't speak English, it comes across at best as an annoyance, and at worst an act of disregard. And for the record, there are indeed a few non English speaking pax on the BOM flight (I've noticed about 5-10% on my flights). Yes, they may know how to say, "thank you" and "where is the toilet" but not much more. Why it is necessary to have French, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese and Spanish speakers but not Hindi speakers baffles me, when CO dumps 2 777s daily into India.