Pilot and attendant announcements
 

3 questions - while flying:

1) When the pilot announces the altitude..is it always in FEET as opposed to meters?

2) When the pilot comments on natural landmarks/scenery - is that strictly up to him/her or is there some sort of protocol established by the airline itself?

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...

Thanks.

I would ask a fourth question:

Why do they have to be so loud? Most flights I am on it's like they are trying to burst an eardrum or something. Same with gate announcements. I guess it has to be loud enough to be heard over all the airport noise but it just seems too loud to me.

And do they really need to welcome me to flight xyz 5 times while boarding and tell me over and over that they will be serving a choice of coke, sprite, apple juice, coffee, decaf coffee and water?

OK I got that out of my system, feel better.

The thing that has always struck me as just a bit unsettling about the landing script is that the so many pilots (more than 95%, it seems) are so married to the phrase "we'll have you on the ground soon" as oppose do "we'll be landing soon," as if they're reluctant to predict a safe landing, but one way or another, we'll all be "on the ground."

Of course I know enough about piloting and air safety statistics to believe that the pilot never uses the "on the ground" terminology from a lack of confidence. But have they never considered how the ubiquitous phrase could be heard by nervous/inexperienced passengers?

And welcome to FlyerTalk, EqualOpp. Sorry I didn't really address your questions.

I can tell you that I'd imagine all commercial pilots "think" in feet with regard to elevation, since (I believe) air traffic control universally uses feet, and every altimeter I've ever seen was in feet. The electronic "glass cockpit" displays could surely be made to display meters quite easily, but I'd think that none of them do.

I'm also pretty sure that scenery announcements are at the discretion of the pilot.

If you're really lucky they won't announce it at all and the first inkling you get is when they call final boarding for your flight.

Nautical miles and feet are the international standards for air traffic control. It's the same reason the pilots and ATC speak English to each other.

I'm pretty sure that non-US airlines don't use feet in their home language announcements.

I wouldn't swear to it, since I generally perk up my ears for the English version, but I don't think I've ever heard an AF pilot making the announcement telling the pax that they are cruising a 35,000 pieds....

On most European airlines I was on, announcements are usually made using both US and metric standards, also for velocity, temperature etc.

As for the scripts, each airline has their own, and while they all essentially say the same things, the wording varies.

Typically I find I can barely hear the pilot's announcements. I like when they give out info about landmarks and scenery. In the US, you will hear the English system and not the metric. Many of them do sound folksy....again, I like that.

Try KLM with your headset on while watching a movie, It's now an instinctive reaction for me to rip them off asap when they pause the IFE :eek:

They also give both metric and imperial measurements, both over the PA system and on the inflight display. Mind you the metric seems to be up longer than the imperial for some reason.

As previously mentioned, pilots in the US announce in feet because it's the official standard of measurement for altitude. There isn't any script for pilots regarding "scenery." Some point it out, some don't. Some are chatty, some aren't. I was on a CO flight when the pilot announced that we were going to be crossing over the Grand Canyon and that he would ask the controller for a lower altitude. A minute later he came back on and said we were cleared to 28,000 feet and we descended for a better look.

I thought it was pretty cool. :cool:

I don't think there is an official script from the FAA. Here are the relevant FAR (Federal Aviation Regulations) though:

http://www.risingup.com/fars/info/part121-571-FAR.shtml

Aviation in much of the world works in feet, and in fact this got enshrined in the associated "flight levels" which are used when above about 5,000 feet (I won't go into details). Thus 35,000 feet is "Flight Level 350". This is the case for pilots even in countries where metric is the norm, although they will usually convert it into metric for public announcements where the concept of feet may well be unknown.

Exception is the old Soviet Block where they were not bound by these conventions in olden days of aviation when the standards were formed, and always used metres only, and continue to do so. This includes cruising levels such as 11,000 metres being the equivalent of FL 350. Aircraft going across old-days socialist airspace make the conversion at the boundary. All-electronic flightdecks such as the Airbus can handle this in all the displays. The Tupolevs and Ilyushins still used by many Russian carriers have all their instruments in metres and have to make the reverse conversion when operating in western airspace.

Airspeed is given among pilots in nautical miles per hour, or knots (about 5% more than mph). Pilots from metric countries will convert it in public announcements to km/h. Those from miles countries do not usually bother to make the conversion. Ex-Soviets are different again and use metres per second.

There are other differences worldwide. The US gives air pressure (significant for altimeters etc) in inches whereas the rest of the world uses hectopascals (which you may know by its old name of millibars - it's the same thing). Americans thus say "Altimeter setting 29.92" whereas Brits say "QNH 1005" for the same thing. It's just something to adjust to.

Knots to MPH
 

It's about 15% more, actually....a knot is a nautical mile/hour, or 6000 feet (1000 fathoms, a measurement fingertip-to-fingertip of a man's outstretched arms).

A satute mile (called that by Act of Parliament, I think under Queen Elizabeth I) is 5280 feet, supposedly, it's the length of 1000 paces by a Roman legionaire...which make no sense, but then standard railway gauge of 4' 8 1/2" was set by the distance between the wheels of a standard Roman chariot....almost everywhere in the Western world. I think in Russia, it's different, as Joe Stalin wanted to slow down invading armies by forcing them to re-load their supply trains as they crossed the border.

Anyone been to Russia recently and know if that's still the case?

Railways came to Russia long before Stalin - about 80 years before !

The 4'8 1/2" railway gauge came from the common width of wagon wheels in the North-East of England where railways first started off. It wasn't the thought of interchange (which the pioneers didn't really think of) so much as the first engineers went out across the world from there and used what they knew. And the first loco manufacturers were all tooled up for it too and there was no point in changing.

Yes the gauge in Russia (and places like Finland that were Russian until 1919) is still 5'0". Sleeping cars still run through from Moscow to Western Europe with special wheels on telescopic axles that can be changed at the border. There are many other places in the Western World with non-standard gauges (Spain/Portugal, Ireland, parts of Australia, etc).

Sorry, but if you're going to nit-pick other posters, get your facts right.

Take it from an old sailor: a nautical mile is 6080 feet, not 6000. It has nothing to do with fathoms and never did. It is equal to one minute of arc (1/21600 of the distance) along the equator, as accurately as it was known a couple of hundred years ago.

A mile - mille pasuum in Latin - was, as you say, 1000 paces (a pace is two steps), which was 5000 feet. The British also measured in furlongs, which are 660 feet. When they were standardizing the mile, they wound up with a measure near the Roman mille pasuum, but exactly 8 furlongs.

The metric system makes a lot of sense, but hasn't got anywhere near the charm of the old system.