Originally Posted by socalterp
This issue always never ceases to amaze me. Only 2 language speakers required for a flight staffed with what, at least 10-12 FAs? The number of non-English speaking FAs on Cathay, JAL, Lufthansa, Air France, etc. has been 0, at least in my experience, on flights to/from the US.
It does seem that way, and for the China routes only 2 language speaker FAs may be a bit on the thin side. However, English is -- more than any other language -- a "passport" when it comes to travel. It was not even a century ago where one could travel the world without any government-issued documentation and that merely speaking English was a passport to entry to most all of the world. And back then, English was nowhere near as widely understood as it is today.
English:
lingua franca today, and more so tomorrow .... especially in the aviation industry.