Originally Posted by
Ceasy
Americans can be egregiously insensitive to foreign language issues - something that happens frequently on domestic flights. Can't tell you how many times I've had to translate flight announcements for a neighbor on a domestic flight to Miami (which often have a large minority of monolingual Spanish speakers).
I know I've seen subtitled safety videos on domestic flights somewhere... (Yes, I realize not all aircraft have safety videos.)
In any case, both the official domestic language and the ICAO language are English, so I wouldn't expect Spanish on a domestic U.S. flight.
That said, in the interest of safety, it would not bother me in the slightest if Spanish announcements were done as well. Or even French, since it has a long history in international trade, travel, and diplomacy. If an airline thinks it might have a sizable audience in a given language, it should try to do something to deliver safety messages in that language if possible - even if the law doesn't require it.
The catch is that ICAO requirements are for flight crews to be proficient in English only (in addition to their airline's official language). I'm guessing that FAA requirements for U.S. domestic-only crews also only require English. So getting Spanish/French/other languages on domestic flights would end up being limited to the video-enabled types.