Nothing like a bit of condescension to start the day on a good foot.

Ah, so people's accents reflects not only their degree of professionalism but also how lazy and sloppy they are. Silly me. And here was I thinking that one's accent was first and foremost a reflection of one's social environment, especially (but not exclusively) while growing up. I should have realised that it really is nothing to do with that and all to do with laziness and sloppiness.

Well, as a non-native speaker who does not master RP, I would have to know my place as an irremediably unprofessional, lazy and sloppy individual in you books.

Well, I don't know if you are a non-native speaker but I am so I feel reasonably qualified to speak on what makes things difficult to understand for a non native speaker, or at the very least what things were particularly difficult for this non-native speaker to understand. The one thing that I found most difficult to cope with when I first moved to the UK was not so much people not "speaking proper", as you put it.It was strong regional accents. Belfast and Glaswegian accents were particularly challenging but plenty of others took me quite some time to adjust to, from rural West Country ones to urban Scouse or Geordie ones.

Pronouncing 'th's as 'f's, which seems to be the bit that seems to particularly irk you as "unprofessional", has never affected my capacity to understand what was said and I suspect that this is true for most, if not all, non-native speakers. It just does not make announcements less intelligible to non-native speakers.

So let us not confuse genuine issues of communication, which most certainly do exist with some speakers (whether they speak "proper" or not), with common garden variety social prejudice.

You are still misunderstanding me. As stated, my opinion is NOT with regards to non-native speakers where of course pronunciation and dialect becomes far more influential - I am native English and also speak Italian and of course do not correctly get the precise sounds and dialect that are unique to that language. This is to be expected (I certainly try to get it right) and of course applies to non-native English CC making announcements.

But there is a correct way of speaking in English if English is the native language and IMHO, to drop the "h" from words and pronounce "th" as "ff" or "v" as in "Portsmuff" and "wiv" sounds unprofessional and less authoritative. After all, the correct way is certainly still taught in school is it not?

That is all well and good, but my original question was whether in some cases there shouldn't be a more immediate intervention when it's obvious that an announcement hasn't been delivered intelligibly. In the case I mentioned it should have been clear to the senior crew member that nobody who doesn't have superhuman concentration skills would have been able to piece together what the announcer was saying, yet she did nothing and left the culprit in charge of the rest of the announcements for the flight. This is what I found surprising.

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Well, I think that we will have to agree to disagree on this. It certainly sound less refined for cabin crew to use estuary English turns of phrases or pronunciation and therefore may affect the image that the airline might want to project but that would not lead me to doubt the professionalism of the individuals concerned. It simply is not an issue of professionalism.

Yes I have been on an AMS flight with a Dutch captain, who proceeded to make his second announcement in Dutch, following the well trodden standard-ish BA Captain/FO greeting. Some of the locals did seem a bit confused , as did I, thinking momentarily that I had wandered onto a KLM plane.

Last week on a flight to FCO there was a Dutch FO- he spoke perfect English, and obviously did not make any announcements in Dutch, but like various English regional accents, the Dutch accent is pretty unmistakable. I was going to say "Tot ziens" to him as I walked off the plane, but thought this might be a bit cheeky.

I have also come across now and then announcements in French by the captain on flights to France (usually with a British accent rather than from a native speaker). It is always a nice touch, which I think is appreciated by the passengers concerned.

Congratulations to all for one of the most British threads I have ever read on Flyertalk, is anyone aware of any accent discussions on the various US airline forums? Anyway, I will join in.

I am Scottish and work in London and have clients all over the world. They don't seem to have any issue understanding me but, whilst I have an accent, I speak quite standard English. I think often it is not accents that confuse people but the use of regional words and colloquialisms that are unfamiliar. I doubt this happens much with cabin crew announcements.

Remembering the original post. Not everyone is comfortable speaking in public, and I would cut them some slack. I doubt anyone actually missed anything vital.

My personal pet peeve is crew using unnecessarily flowery or convoluted language. Keeping things simple will help non native speakers, you are not supposed to be showing off. My personal favourite annoyances are saying speak to "myself" or "deplane". "Myself" is just wrong in this context and done by people who are scared of using the word "me" as the do not know when to use "me" or "I". "Deplane" is correct but again was just made up by someone who felt that "exit" or "disembark" or "get off" didn't sound smart enough. I have even been invited to "detrain" on occasion. Of course this all pales in comparison to having to read Facbook posts where people do not know the difference between "too" and "to", "there", "they're" and "their" and "you're and "your". You cannot really help your accent but you can learn the English language.

Will people be starting to complain soon about the difference in pronunciation of the "r" sound in English?

The "correct" pronunciation of the "r" sound - as in Recieved Pronunciation - is very similar to that of an "l".

The (nowadays) more common pronunciation, especially amongst those towards the younger end of the spectrum, of the "r" sound is much closer to a "w" sound yet is still an "r" sound.

Studies have shown that a majority of British people cannot hear the difference between these two sounds when it is not being emphasised, but native speakers of other languages, such as Arabic can hear the difference very clearly.

I for one am in the minority of Brits who are able to distinguish between the two yet find it very hard to pronounce my "r"s in the "correct" way, despite the fact that I wish I did and have tried on numerous occasions to adjust this and I very much appreciate hearing somebody who is able to pronounce their "r"s in the manner prescribed in RP.

Very few cabin crew in my recent BA flights have actually succeeded in having a "correct" pronunciation of "r", and it begs the question, at what point does the norm become correct as opposed to traditional views of correctness of pronunciation?

That is why I said...
.
If any accent is so strong that it makes it difficult for people to understand them, especially non native English speakers, then yes it then becomes an issue.

I don't think it is beyond anyone to listen to someone speaking and to determine if it is likely their accent may be an issue. I could do it so I am sure the BA recruiters could do it!

I was speaking to a friend of mine about this and he accused me of being racist - RACIST!!!! Because I expected cabin crew to be able to be understood easily in English... in England!!!! Ridiculous! I don't see how it could be racist as I would have the same issue with a strong geordie, scouse or scots speaker (other strong UK accents also apply!) if it meant I couldn't understand them. It has nothing to do with race in any way at all.

Where do you get your information from? I was there, you weren't.

You are right I wasn't there and it may have been a total mess and annoying.

However, as people are not compelled to listen to safety briefings, you can wear headphones during the briefing and they are not translated into other languages then implicitly it would appear that the information is not considered to be vital.
People can also watch the briefing and read the safety card if they choose.

Actually, as a non-native speaker of english, my experience is precisely the reverse. Being unable to understand the odd word or colloquialism is most of the time not an issue. Often, the context will supply the meaning or likely meaning and even if it does not, it usually does not prevent understand the gist of what is said. Where it gets really difficult is where you are faced with a flow where you can't even identify where one word finishes and another one starts. That is where things start to be much more challenging. Although not directly relevant in relation to announcements, this is also true in a one-to-one conversation. If there is a word you do not understand in what your interlocutor says, it really is not an issue as a non-native speaker to ask him or her to explain what the term means. If it is the whole sentence that you struggle with because of an accent that you are unfamiliar with, you can of course ask them to repeat but, more often than not, you are none the wiser after the sentence is repeated and you are also conscious of the potential to offend them by repeatedly asking. So, instead, you tend to smile and pretend that you have understood even when you do not have a scooby what it is that they mean.

It tends to grate on my ears too but these are good examples of usage that is rather unlikely to phase a non-native speaker. Most basic speakers of English will be familiar with reflexive pronouns and will know that "myself" refers to the person speaking. So you can easily work out what they mean when they say "speak to myself", however incorrect it might be."Deplane" is not particularly difficult to understand given the context. This is the kind of work you do all the time in a language that you only have a limited knowledge of. You tend to guess what the intended meaning probably is given the context and "deplane" would not normally be that difficult to work out if you know what a plane is and what the prefix "de" usually indicates in English, which many speakers with a basic working knowledge of English would do (and certainly most Romance language speakers would).

I'm profoundly deaf. I havent a clue what is being said on announcements. The announcements come so fast and said non-stop without a pause for breath that my husband cannot even relay the message. It is high time (pardon the pun) that airlines have to follow the same rules as transport on the ground in where they can be forced to make reasonable adjustments for disabilities.