I've also often wondered what the policy is on multilingual announcements on aircraft.

In Europe, I often hear one of a) English only, b) Carrier's national language and English or c) Carrier's national language, destination national language and English. It's rare not to hear English on international flights (although not unheard of).

But then it gets complicated. National carriers can offer flights outside their own country. So, do Adria do Slovenian announcements on FRA-VIE? Do Varig do Portuguese on AMS-CDG?

Then you've got multilingual countries. What do Swiss use? All the languages, or just that of the areas of the airports involved? What about Indian airlines? Or Finnair, with the strict language laws there?

Then you've got combinations of these. What do VLM use on LCY-LUX? English, French, Dutch, German and Letzebuergesch?

Is there a standard policy on this? A safety regulation?

A subject close to my heart, and one on which I have been meaning to start a thread... especially after some recent Ryanair flights I've been on where the cabin crew and the passengers effectively had no common language.

There ought to be safety regulations on this, especially for flights to/from countries where English is not so widely spoken. You can probably get away with English only on a flight from the UK to the Netherlands, but having no French on a flight to France is a different matter.

Finnair always uses Finnish, Swedish and English. And commonly the language of the destination country. And sometimes if you´re really really lucky even another language! e.g HEL-BKK gets the announcements in Finnish, Swedish, English, Thai and Chinese!

cheers

JB

Dang! And all this time, I thought a nautical mile was 6,076.11549 feet.

...approximately ;)

For some reason, CX, SQ, BA pilots do an excellent job of pre-flight announcements; they sound casual, unrehearsed and friendly. And they never refer to us as "folks." I don't recall hearing any mid-flight announcements; the next time you hear from the cockpit again is when you're about to land.

Great information folks ! :) Thanks.

Thanks Eastwest for the link to the regulations. Though I don't think it mentioned anything about electronics...although I could have just missed that since I was skimming through it.

All good information. So conversion is done to metric (Or feet - in the case of Russia) where appropriate... I've flown around alot in Australia but I certainly wasn't paying attention...since Australia (and Canada) both use metric and are primary English...are the English announcements in metric then? Presumably it is different between domestic and Int'l flight to the US? Anybody here from either country can confirm?

I will certainly confirm the IFE Airshow/Moving map system alternating between imperial/metric. On that note...if anyone has any questions about IFE I would be happy to answer them. My last job was as a product manager at the largest IFE vendor working on Laptop plane connectivity. I worked for several of the companies in the industry.

Oh yeah...the reason I'm asking this question...is that I'm writing a fiction book (My new path) and there are some scenes on an airplane...so I just want to get it technically right.

Flights in question in book are from US to Copenhagen, Denmark and Denmark to Greenland.

Just to get back to the in-flight announcements there are no set standards by the authorities and each airline does their own thing. However the whole procedure of an airline's operations, including the announcements, have to be fully documented in "Standard Operating Procedures" (a big book written up at airline HQ) and the regulatory authorities sign this off with the airline that it is OK as part of granting their Air Operators Certificate (this is all taken very seriously and both sides nit-pick every sentence to get it right), so there is some regulatory participation in things.

Many airlines have cut back on the in-flight commentary in recent years because of complaints from the in-flight entertainment users that their beloved movies get interrupted by comments on the scenery which they are just not interested in. There have been comments about this on FT, but I think many of us here are of the opposite view, that we would like more information from the flight deck, not less.

When the infamous Ryanair started off the used One-Eleven jets hired in from the Romamian national carrier Tarom, complete with pilots. Their English was so poor that they were prohibited from making PA announcements to the cabin except in case of emergency, and the FAs had to do it all. Pity the air traffic controllers the pilots had to speak to though :eek: This takes us back to Aviatrix's comments about what now happens with FR flight attendant PA, including safety briefings by non-English speaking staff. You would have thought they would have moved on to pre-recorded announcements.

EqualOpp, your flights in question from the US to Denmark will have announcements sequentially in English and Danish (if SAS), and English only with possibly a Danish tape of the key bits if a US carrier (not sure). From Denmark to Greenland they will be in Danish and English.

On a recent Finnish internal commuter flight with 12 passengers (Golden Air Saab 340, Helsinki to Lappeenranta) the initial announcements were made in Finnish. Then the two FAs at the front looked at the passenger list, looked at me, looked at each other, and did it all again in English !

The PA announcements aren't actually my main concern here - most of us probably know these by heart now.

My main concern is that these FAs would not be able to communicate with their passengers if something were to go wrong. They may all know a few basic phrases like "Duty-free, anyone?" or "Tickets for the Stansted Express?", but their actual COMMAND of the English language is almost non-existent.

Thanks for the specifics WHBM!

Inuit announcements for Greenland flights?
 

Just curious, since Greenland has been changing all the Danish town names to Inuit names -- would the PA announcements on flights from Denmark to Greenland also be in Inuit?

From memory, when I flew GL from CPH-SFJ, SFJ was referred to as both Kangerlussuaq and Søndre Strømfjord.

(And if I'm being picky, the de facto language in Greenland is West Greenlandic, rather than Inuit.)

3) Can anyone post the standard script (Is there one?) when the plane is getting ready to land and the attendants announce that seatbacks should be raised, electronics turned off, tray tables up, etc...

As we have commenced our descent into Sydney the captain has advised the captain crew to prepare for landing. We ask that all seats are in the upright position, all trays are up and all your baggage is either placed in the overhead locker or place under the seat in front of you. We ask that all electronic equipment include laptops and CD players be turned off. The cabin crew will shortly come through the cabin to collect any rubbish you may have. We thank you for flying Qantas.

About 15 minutes later. As the captain has turned the fastened seat back sign on we ask that you return to your seat and have your seat belt fastened. Cabin crew should now be seated.

I recently read an article about the different languages of the Inuit, from Alaska to Greenland. Couldn't remember the specific one for Greenland (although ... DOH!) so I just said "Inuit". Figured people what get the gist. Surprised that you knew, although given the breadth of knowledge of this group, I should not have been. Thanks. :-:

PA Annoucments
 

go to this link to get PA Annoucments... http://www.airodyssey.net/reference/inflight.html it says everything!! :) :)

Awesome link gobblemonster93 (Welcome to Flyertalk too!)!. Thanks stut and bundy bear. Useful info.

This forum rocks! ok... I've been using Kangerlussuaq. I would have thought that Sondre Stromfjord would be phased out by now.

stut - did you fly recently?

on language...(I'll be brief)

if I had a phrase in the book like -

Jill wondered how the Inuit viewed nature. She decided to ask Josef (A non-English speaking Greenlander).

"Do you know how they view nature?" she wondered aloud. Jack (her friend) translated.
Josef answered in Greenlandic.
"He said that....

---

1) When people speak of the language they would always use the word Greenlandic as opposed to Inuit yes?

2) However...when people (Native or not) talk about the native people (in 3rd person or in 1st) would they say Inuit or Greenlander?

I'm thinking the 2nd question could be answered on whether what I was talking about was an Inuit Arctic-wide custom, or specific to Greenland.

Anyone have any insights?