Hahahaha, I took an earlier flight out of ATL to reach my destination well in time before midnight, but guess what happened? We were sitting in the aircraft, for no specific reason till about 10.00 pm! But I guess everything happens for some other higher purpose, I would have missed my parents call, had I been on air :) (sounds cool eh?). While I was sitting idly, my brain ticked in this angle:
You know what would be a great idea? Teach airlines employees another language. While the world is going more global, it is short sightedness to expect all travellers to speak one language. The very essense of the word "traveller" wouild be lost in some sense. I know flight attendants and crew on international flights speak multiple languages, but there is sure a huge advantage if domestic carriers were also equipped with help in more than one. How to decide which language? Simple, stats. The obvious ones: Most spoken language among travellers, periods of travel, favorite destinations..yada yada..It is surprising how inspite of the big % of Spanish speakers in the US, the % of Spanish spoken by an average American is really small (just trying to sound hep, basically, Americans don't speak Spanish as much as they should). Start training crew on flight to famous tourist spots on a language highly spoken by travellers..
I know in India when one travels by simple-less punctual-Indian Railways, all announcements are made in three languages : the local, English and the most spoken (Hindi). Interesting that airlines haven't thought about this. I remember reading an article where some carrier saved millions of $ by removing one olive from the business class lunch (3 became 2). Make that one and teach a language :)
3 comments:
most americans hate to speak in spanish or for that matter any other foreign language. Maybe you could teach them all french and get them to change the Freedom Fries back to French Fries :-o)
->Sriram: wow! Would sure love that. But not too sure if I am qualified enough to teach them french.
hmm.. This (getting stuck in a plane) is something that keeps happenning to me.. I will someday write a book called "10 things to do when stuck in a plane on a runway", and maybe, just maybe, teaching spanish or french to the cabin crew could be one of them. I'll reference your blog, of course.
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