Originally Posted by
anaggie
Kinda of like all the French in France !!!!
Umm...?
Originally Posted by
anaggie
Flying in Business class -- on a flight to the USA -- speak French to recieve better service? SURE !!!! ... But in a plane travelling to the USA....the service should not depend on whether or not you speak the language.
No, no, no. That's not the point. The point examined in the overall thread is that, in a
direct comparison of AF and CO service, it's unfair to hold AF to a different standard than CO regarding language issues when
both airlines market themselves to a global (and affluent, by the way) clientele.
And the
inverse of your disingenous comment ("Flying in Business class -- on a flight to the USA -- speak French to recieve better service? SURE !!!!") is absolutely true: A French-speaker/French citizen flying to France on CO ex-USA will almost certainly get better treatment if the Francophone pax can speak English! With only 1 or 2 "designated foreign-language speakers" on CO's flights to CDG, the French-only pax are SOL -- even in BF -- until the "designated" French-speaking attendant can get around to them. OR, if the French-speaking pax also speaks some English, he/she is far more likely to have their request met by asking (in English) one of the 8 FAs available, rather than waiting for the ONE who can (possibly) understand the request.
So, on AF, the same type of proposition is only *occasionally* true, because far more of AF's attendants are fluent in English when heading to the USA
than are CO's attendants fluent in French when heading to France. It's almost a recognized truism that French-only pax will have a much harder time on CO than will English-only pax on AF. Nevertheless, it still curries favor to know a bit of the destination country's language, including on the conveyance to the country.