Announcements in multiple languages.
 

I am used to announcement in two languages, usually, English and another language. The other language is one of the language of the destination, language of the country of ownership, or a dominant language of a a major hub en-route.
Announcements in three languages? Announcements were made in English, Japanese and Chinese(Mandarin/Cantonese?). That's annoying. How many languages do you think announcements should be made?

Only 3? Man, you should get out more. SN Brussels is almost always 4 languages (French, Flemmish, English and language of destination), albeit the language of destination is more often than not playback. I've even heard 5 languages onboard an Air Canada flight (French, English, Flemmish, Italian and German), and whenever Emirates takes me flying they usually have around 6-8 different nationalities, and thus languages, amongst the cabin crew.

Doesn't bother me in the least, and to me beats a mono-linguist speed talking through the boarding message (Yes, US based regional carriers, I'm looking at you).

Five languages? By the time they're done getting to the point, you'd already be sprinting to get to your connecting flight.

For instance, on flights to/from Japan, due to the vapid niceties "expected" by those customers, Japanese announcements take eons longer to complete (even more verbose on Japan-flagged carriers). When everyone else has slid down to the rafts, the Japanese will still be doing calisthenics in the aisles.

I've been in the opposite position before, and therefore I am a huge fan of having it in as many languages as they are capable of.

I was flying LAM Mozambique a few years back, on a regional flight, in a plane I wasn't familiar with. All the safety instructions and inboard announcements were in Portuguese only, and so were the flight safety cards.

We're so used to hearing it in English that I'd hard to appreciate how disorienting (and frankly, a little scary) it is to have absolutely no idea of what's going on. I can only imagine how bad it would be in an emergency.

on a flight from BRU to ZRH on LX it was Dutch (prerecorded), French (prerecorded), English (with a thick Australian accent, no idea wether it was prerecorded as I was a bit baffled by the Australian accent) and German (F/A)

Multiple languages do not bother me, but they should make an effort to make the announcement loud enough and clear enough so that one is not left guessing what was said......and they should repeat it perhaps.

2 languages are enough for me.
English, and the destination one.
More that that, it becomes a Ryanair raffle.

I think the standard practice in Europe is to do announcements in English, language of the carrier and languages of the origin/destination.

At times though I've had LIS-MAD flights where the announcements were only in English and Portuguese, or Spanish and Portuguese or Portuguese and Spanish, depending on the carrier.

I've had an EZY flight where the announcements were done in British English, British French (yes, such a thing exists!) and French Portuguese. That was a fun listen.

^

Last time I flew to New Orleans, there was English and Cajun. :D

SIN has the official 4.

A lot of countries don't use English as lingua franca either.

SQ makes announcements in all four-Malay, English, Chinese/Mandarin/Hokkien, and Tamil?
Whether English is lingua franca or not is irrelevant. In absence of a common language, English is the default language of communication. I suppose the airline is obliged to not prefer one over others. Are all Government documents and communications conducted in all four languages?
As I understand, the term official language does not mean that every communication must be in all four languages but that, one must communicate in one of these languages to establish that you did communicate in the legal sense. There are more than a dozen languages, which have the status of an official in one or more states. It does not mean you have to communicate in all of those languages. The currency does have the amount written in all those languages.

I call bull$%!&. Outside of *maybe* Latin America and extreme parts of nowhere, exactly which countries don't use English as their lingua franca?

All of central and South America, Russia, China, most other Asian countries, middle East, most of Africa -- so most of the world.

Whether a language is lingua franca or not depends on the circumstances. There are many countries where English would be very useful in urban setting but not at all useful in the interior, where an indigenous language is the lingua franca. In areas were more than one dialect or language is spoken, English may or another regional language may serve as lingua franca.

Why not Italian and Japanese? I am sure you could get by fine in Japanese. :D