FlyerGoldII

Although I am unilingual, I still am posting this question. On flights from LHR to CDG and back this past week, all announcements (by the captain and flight attendants) and all communication(s) between the flight attendants and the passengers seemed to be in English (only).

If this is the case for all international BMI flights, that this would not be very condusive to attracting non-English speaking passengers (especially those originating in BMI's foreign destinations).

House

English just seems to get treated as the universal language by British airlines generally - you won't hear the captain on a BA or Virgin or easyjet flight using any language other than English. There will (even on BMI) usually be taped announcements in the other language(s) for that route. To be fair, BMI, like BA, will usually have at least one member of the cabin crew who can speak the other language(s) for a route (for instance they have a few staff based out of BRU).

This isn't even just a British thing - I was on an SAS flight to China recently where there wasn't a single Mandarin or Cantonese speaker on board, and the Chinese safety video lasted all of 30 seconds. There were nonetheless plenty of Chinese passengers.

I agree the airlines should make more of an effort, but even before all the cuts this was never really something they bothered with.

Strawb

I had a Spanish purser on a bmi flight from CDG in September who actually made announcements in French as well as English. But, yes, that's been the exception rather than the norm on all my flights.

One airline which is good with multi-lingual cabin crew is Virgin Express. On a flight from BRU-FCO the purser made announcements in English, French, Dutch and Italian. And that's not even an intercontinental flight.

phillipas

That Virgin Express have multi-lingual crews in comparison with BD is not so much a reflection on the airlines - more on the people of Belgium. A Belgian who can speak Dutch, English, Flemish, French and another (or maybe two) languages is not uncommon. Finding a Brit who can speak anything other than English is fairly difficult.

Likewise, the BD puser who speaks Spanish, Englsh and French is more down to said purser being Spanish than BD.

Overall English is the international language. At the moment I'm limited to Chinese domestic flights and there are always announcments in English, albeit very bad English. Even the trains have a few onboard announcments in English (even worse than the planes!). It's a good way to while away a few hours - sitting with the announcer and correcting their set texts.

simonsmith

I recently flew AF in C from SIN to CDG and the crew struggled with English let alone any other language.

FlyerGoldII

My point would be that AF would offer English as well as French as the language of communication with passengers, on a CDG-LHR route (officially), but BD does not. If a French (even if he spoke English, as well) resident might want to preferentially go on AF over BD, while a British resident may have less preference to go on BD or British Airways over AF on this particular route (at least from a language perspective - I am not talking about a passenger's preference from a cost or patriotism perspective).

stut

The LHR-AMS flights, however, always used to feature a Dutch recording. Unless the legendary Ms van Horn was the purser on board, in which case, the announcements were live...

small em

On some Malaysian domestic flights I took recently there were ONLY English announcements. Not even the safety briefing in Malay, despite plenty of locals being on board.

frankvb

[OT] At the risk of offending the Belgians on this board - Dutch and Flemish are basically the same language. English as spoken in the South East as compared to spoken in Scotland is more different IMHO...

AJLondon

any relationship with our blair van horn?

Shame BD don't fly to Liverpool John Lennon airport, as I've met plenty of crew who'd excel in announcing in the local dialect.

phillipas

I can see the Flemish speakers spluttering and clearing their throats at that comment. tyr.

TahitiBoy

Well, whilst disappointed to hear of the paucity of language speakers on int'l routes, it doesn't surprise me one bit.

The Brits are even worse than we yanks in terms of learning foreign languages.

jjpb3

Based on my experience so far (I'm not counting first-generation immigrants, who constitute a higher proportion of the population in the US), the Brits aren't as bad as the Yanks. But I make no claims about the representativeness of the sample of people I've met.

stut

Mind you, you don't necessarily need to know a foreign language. I don't really speak Dutch, but I could quite happily recite you the whole "Dames en heren. Hartelijk welkom aan boord van deze Airbus drie honderd twintig van bmi British Midland..." speech.

jacob_m

I agree that the cabin crew should be able to speak at least one more language other than English, for example French on a CDG-bound flight.
As far as I remember it used to be better 2-3 years ago, when flying LHR-CDG back then they usually made (non-recorded) announcements in French as well, nowadays it rarely happen.
Perhaps there is a connection between the lack of languages spoken and the fact that BMI is not a very attractive employer among FAs anymore.

On the other hand I have to say I have always been very impressed with BA when it comes to languages.
You can see on the name tags what languages they speak (look at the flags!).
I have seen BA employees speaking four languages.