Originally Posted by orbitmic

I fully agree with golfmad here - well actually, not fully because I have even experienced surly crews on the likes of QR, MH and more rarely CX. I think possibly the only airlines on which I have found crews almost completely 'equal' are JL and KE.

I must say that the comparisons of surly vs friendly crews never ceases to puzzle me a little anyway. If some HR department has found a way of hiring never grumpy people in every job, I think they should quickly patent their process and sell its use for a hefty price. What's the miraculous recipe here? Do crews from airline x never have an argument with their partner? Do their kids never bring bad marks from school or fight with their little friends? Are they uniquely immune to depression? Are they always paired with their best pals on flight? Do they never pay taxes, get a parking fine, or have their boiler breaking down? Heck, I would like to think of myself as someone who tends to be friendly and pleasant in my professional interactions, yet I have no doubt that there are days when people must think I am a massive a****** and quite understandably so.

Over the years, I would say that I have encountered both my best and my worst crews on AF, and close to my best and close to my worst on BA. Even on KE and JL which I mentioned above, I would almost bet that my impression of 'equality' is due to my inability to pick some of the more subtle shades of mood expressions in Japanese and Korean interaction compared to a native, who might equally find all Americans "nice" without realising that the very same words could be expressed very positively or very negatively by that 'other'.

I suspect that much judgement on good and bad crew is simply steeped in cultural habits and expectations, be they comfort with one's own primary social codes or idealisation of others. For example, many here praise the tendency of many BA crew to 'banter'. My sense is that this is merely (often British) people just being comfortable with a British mode of social interaction. Now if you really like banter, arguably, you get more of it on KLM than on BA, but as it happens, quite a few of my British friends and colleagues find KL crew 'rude' just because the frankness threshold tolerated in Dutch banter is probably quite a lot higher than in British banter. And who has forgotten the time when BA told its crew to pat customers on the shoulders and what not in the 1990s because US passengers used to consider BA crew stiff and unfriendly compared to the very different conception of friendliness that prevails in much of the US society and hospitality industry where calling you 'guys' and checking on how you are doing every 26 1/2 minute is considered good waiting practice? Now of course, conversely, here we read a lot about QR and EK crew being considered 'robotic'. I find that criticism quite absurd myself but suspect it is just related to the same differences in standard modes of interaction. For those who wish QR crew to 'banter' more, try and imagine how well it would be received when a young female cabin crew to 'banter' with a local sheik. As for AF and LX crews, it is worth remembering that France, for example, is a country where restaurant service is considered a profession with its technical skills and training. The whole idea that many US and UK restaurants are staffed by students is just extraordinary to many French or Swiss people for whom those kids would be more suited to work at McDonalds or Starbucks but where no 'decent' restaurant would ever think of putting its reputation in the hands of some unprofessional kids however willing. So yes, many a French or Swiss passenger will look at the way crew pour wine or cut cheese on most foreign crews (that is where cheese is at least cut and wine is at least poured rather than your getting pre-plated stuff) and feel a little ill at ease.

The same goes for the tea and coffee experiences across airlines incidentally. Many Brits will find comfort in the way BA serves its cups of teas whilst most of the rest of the tea drinking world, from Japan to Turkey and from Russia to China will contemplate in horror. Conversely, many a Brit would consider the cup of tea served on Aeroflot where it has happened to me for crew to offer the 3 or 10 sugar that cup is intended to 'take' a vision of horror. And I'm not even starting on coffee here!

Now of course, especially over long haul flights, many crew are very good at picking up passengers' styles and expectations, but this takes time, it takes numbers (you will hardly do that when you have to serve 75 pax in your section) and non-schizophrenic people cannot just be completely different characters with each and everyone of their passenger with different expectations. Meanwhile, there is no shame in feeling more at ease with people who share our own cultural codes, or on the contrary, being delighted and fascinated by something which precisely departs from it, but it is probably important to recognise it for what it is. The whole notion that crew on airline x are much nicer than on airline y tends to say a lot more about the eyes of the beholder than about crew themselves in a vast majority of cases. It incidentally gets quite easy to check on U2 where you can very easily feel the difference between flights flown by EasyJet UK, EasyJet Switzerland, and EasyJet France to name but a few. In the meantime, I suspect that all airlines will continue to have great, horrid and a lot of good crew, and some crew members which are in a better or worse mood (as per another current thread) from one flight to the next.