Language Swiss, Belgian Etc Crew Use Onboard?

art · Sun Sep 29, 2013 9:17 am

Just curious. What language do the crew use to talk to each other when they come from multilingual countries eg Switzerland (French, German, Italian spoken), Belgium (Flemish, French spoken) and in many other countries where more than one language is used?

Do flightdeck crew converse in the captain's preferred language? What about cabin crew - do they choose the language that the majority prefer to use?

AustrianZRH · Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:01 am

Quoting art (Thread starter):
What about cabin crew - do they choose the language that the majority prefer to use?

From my passenger experience, that's about it. I've heard them conversing in German and French - they will simply use the language they are most comfortable with. IIRC, fluency in German and French is a requirement for Swiss FAs anyway.

panamair · Sun Sep 29, 2013 11:14 am

Quoting AustrianZRH (Reply 1):
IIRC, fluency in German and French is a requirement for Swiss FAs anyway.

The more recent cabin crew recruitment material I have seen from Swiss indicates that only German and English are a must. French is preferred but not mandatory.

Quoting art (Thread starter):
Just curious. What language do the crew use to talk to each other when they come from multilingual countries eg Switzerland (French, German, Italian spoken)

From what I have seen, it is mostly German (Swiss German actually) that is used. When there is a cabin crew member from the Suisse Romande area, then I have heard French being used often with that crew member.

runway23 · Sun Sep 29, 2013 11:17 am

Quoting AustrianZRH (Reply 1):
From my passenger experience, that's about it. I've heard them conversing in German and French - they will simply use the language they are most comfortable with. IIRC, fluency in German and French is a requirement for Swiss FAs anyway.

On Swiss, on intra-europe flights announcements are in English then either German (if flight is from/to ZRH/BSL) or French (to/from GVA). On ZRH-GVA, the first language used is the language of destination then the other language then English.

Speaking French is not a requirement for ZRH based crews, just like speaking German isn't a requirement for GVA based crews.

Flightdeck crews are required to go through a training to learn French (or German) if they do not speak the language.

SInGAPORE_AIR · Sun Sep 29, 2013 11:24 am

For ex-ZRH, I have mainly experienced German and English but on a flight ZRH-BCN these were also complemented by French announcements.

SA7700 · Sun Sep 29, 2013 11:24 am

From my personal experience the Swiss International crew spoke German to one another on my international and European flights.

Take care and regards,

SA7700

OA260 · Sun Sep 29, 2013 11:30 am

From my experience with Swiss ( over 100 flights ) it is a mix depending on the crew. I would say over 80% they speak Swiss German and 20% French. I have heard two Swiss French cabin crew speaking to each other in French on a ZRH-ATH run. I cant say I ever heard them speaking in English other than to passengers.

All announcements were made in English/German/French.

MEA-707 · Sun Sep 29, 2013 12:05 pm

Brussels Airlines is an interesting case as well.
The old Sabena was culturally more French language leaning while Delta Air Transport was more Flemish (Dutch) rooted. When SN Brussels was formed I think the smaller ex DAT Avro's still had more Flemish crew and the former Sabena Airbuses were more Francophone. Without stirring the pot, most Flemish crew can speak French but most Walloons are not very good in Flemish so I guess Flemish crew switched to French when talking with a Walloon collegue to make life easier for everyone.

SCQ83 · Sun Sep 29, 2013 1:28 pm

I flew the other day LX CDG-ZRH and while announcements were in French, German and English, the cabin crew (at least those around me) just seemed to speak English and German only...since they talked to every other French passenger in English. I was surprised since the flight originated in France, so I assume at least for Paris flights they would have some French-speaking FAs.

Viscount724 · Sun Sep 29, 2013 1:51 pm

Quoting panamair (Reply 2):
Quoting AustrianZRH (Reply 1):IIRC, fluency in German and French is a requirement for Swiss FAs anyway.
The more recent cabin crew recruitment material I have seen from Swiss indicates that only German and English are a must. French is preferred but not mandatory.

I don't think French has ever been a requirement for LX (or Swissair) cabin crew. Following is from the LX careers section on their website referring to cabin crew requirements:

High standard of language skills in German and English; French, Italian, Spanish is an advantage.

Quoting OA260 (Reply 6):
From my experience with Swiss ( over 100 flights ) it is a mix depending on the crew. I would say over 80% they speak Swiss German and 20% French.

And those whose native language is French also speak German since German (and English) are requirements at the time of hiring.

blueflyer · Sun Sep 29, 2013 3:57 pm

To add a country the OP didn't mention into the mix, I have heard Air Canada crew talk among themselves in French in a layover in a hotel in Vancouver and English while waiting for a flight in Montreal. I don't think Air Canada routinely use cabin crew from different bases on the same flight, so my educated guess would be that crew based in Montreal speak French first and crew based elsewhere English first.

Boeing74741R · Sun Sep 29, 2013 6:08 pm

When I flew with Brussels Airlines in April MAN-BRU, I remember the crew speaking in English and French, not sure about Dutch/Flemish. It was definitely English and French on Ryanair CRL-MAN.

trintocan · Sun Sep 29, 2013 6:43 pm

In the case of AC by law every flight must have at least one crew member conversant in French. Whether French is the actual first language of the crew member(s) concerned I'm not sure though.

Trintocan.

photoshooter · Sun Sep 29, 2013 7:31 pm

Quoting MEA-707 (Reply 7):

Brussels Airlines is an interesting case as well.
The old Sabena was culturally more French language leaning while Delta Air Transport was more Flemish (Dutch) rooted. When SN Brussels was formed I think the smaller ex DAT Avro's still had more Flemish crew and the former Sabena Airbuses were more Francophone. Without stirring the pot, most Flemish crew can speak French but most Walloons are not very good in Flemish so I guess Flemish crew switched to French when talking with a Walloon collegue to make life easier for everyone.

Very true. Even if the French crew were with less, they still switched to French. Same goes for Brussels, thousands of Flemmish people commute to Brussels and at work they speak French. Not a big thing for them, it's a big thing for people who live East, North or West of the country and can't speak French. They feel insulted...

Quoting Boeing74741R (Reply 11):
When I flew with Brussels Airlines in April MAN-BRU, I remember the crew speaking in English and French, not sure about Dutch/Flemish. It was definitely English and French on Ryanair CRL-MAN.

SN; could have been French speaking crew, normally you can notice when they speak English.

I've logged some SN flights so far and I always talk Dutch. The airline represents a city/country with 3 official languages so I expect the cabin crew to know all three plus English.

SN535 · Sun Sep 29, 2013 7:32 pm

Quoting SCQ83 (Reply 8):

I can't speak on DAT's behalf as I was employed by Sabena. In Sabena's case, it all depended mostly on the crew composition. The senior cabin crew were mostly from the time that the French language was "chic". Hence they mostly spoke French amongst each other. However, most of them could speak Dutch fluently and communicated in Dutch to other staff. The same was the case for the purser as he/she was most of the time a senior level FA. I have never been on a flight where the language was an issue. All FA's mastered both languages though I have to say that I met more young Dutch speaking FA's who were not that well in French than older FA's who were not that good in Dutch.

Things were more or less the same for the cockpit. The FO would most of the time switch to the captain's mother tongue. It goes without saying that for all official communication English was used.
From what I hear from ex-colleagues working at Brussels Airlines, it is still the same as it was back in the days.

sqsfo · Sun Sep 29, 2013 7:43 pm

As per the flight deck, if there is no common language the flight deck crew can communicate in, as per ICAO, and UN aviation regulations, I assume they can at the least communicate with each other in English. They probably already are while talking to air traffic controllers, so communicating in English amongst themselves cant be that hard, or could it?

SN535 · Sun Sep 29, 2013 7:52 pm

And sorry, I should have quoted reply 7 instead of 8 in my previous post!

chepos · Sun Sep 29, 2013 7:59 pm

The one time I flew AC on the YYZ-YUL shuttle of course all announcements were in French and English but the crew spoke among themselves mostly in French. Actually when checking in at YYZ the check in agent had a question regarding my ticket had to call some office and the conversation was in French. At another occasion I was at YYC waiting for the hotel shuttle and the inbound AC crew from the FRA flight was waiting for the shuttle as well, they were speaking French.

Regards,

Chepos

axelesgg · Sun Sep 29, 2013 8:07 pm

They speak, at least try, to speak Swedish on Finnair flights

777klm · Sun Sep 29, 2013 8:37 pm

Quoting axelesgg (Reply 18):
They speak, at least try, to speak Swedish on Finnair flights

On some of my AMS-CPH flights there are also announcements in Swedish. Is it due to the proximity of Malmö (across the bridge from CPH) and/or the number of people connecting to Sweden?

falstaff · Sun Sep 29, 2013 9:24 pm

Quoting trintocan (Reply 12):
In the case of AC by law every flight must have at least one crew member conversant in French. Whether French is the actual first language of the crew member(s) concerned I'm not sure though.

Is that the law for trains too? I have taken the train between Ontario and Quebec several times and once you cross into Quebec the announcements switch over to French/English.

I have heard commuter train crews speaking in English to each other in Montreal, including locomotive crews, but speak to the passengers in French.

axelesgg · Sun Sep 29, 2013 9:49 pm

Quoting 777klm (Reply 19):

Certainly, many Swedes from southern Sweden choose CPH instead of MMX.
But is that on KL or SK? If it's on SK you shouldn't be suprised if they spoke Norwegian either.

Scipio · Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:15 pm

Quoting falstaff (Reply 20):
Is that the law for trains too?

In Belgium, announcements in the train are in Dutch only in Flanders, in French only in Wallonia, and in Dutch and French in Brussels.

I feel very sorry for foreigners visiting our country by train...

OOSGB · Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:19 pm

I could be wrong, but all FA job positions in SN require to be bilingual FR/NL (and EN of course)? Differently from Swiss, whose bases ZRH and GVA are respectively German- and French-speaking, BRU is a bilingual base, not the least because BRU is in Flanders but is the main airport in Belgium (although flight announcements in CRL are also made in NL). Being bilingual FR/NL makes sense from a commercial point of view.

This being said, being a bilingual Belgian, I have used both languages in SN flights and was always answered in the same language.

opethfan · Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:29 pm

Quoting OOSGB (Reply 23):
being a bilingual Belgian

Trilingual, if you count English

When I took YUL - CDG everything was predominantly French (obviously) but CDG - YYZ was more English. Both languages were used on both flights, though.

DexSwart · Mon Sep 30, 2013 2:50 am

South Africa is another country where there is quite a mix of languages. On my last two SA flights, I heard crews converse in Afrikaans, English, Tamil and Zulu. That being said, I was flying to and from Durban and those are the most common languages in there. I spoke to FA's in Zulu, English and Afrikaans respectively and they seemed happy that I tried ( at least for Zulu).

They responded to me in that language, as well.

In South Africa, there is a requirement to have all announcements in English. But I've noticed FA's adding in their mother tongue for an announcement as well. English is mandatory. On SA they welcome and farewell in three languages. At least over the PA.

lychemsa · Mon Sep 30, 2013 3:05 am

No, many French speaking crew on SWISS do not speak German and many of the German speakers don't speak French.

This has been my experience since I took my first SWISSAIR flight in 1954 and I must have made hundreds of Swissair / Swiss flights since then.

mozart · Mon Sep 30, 2013 5:15 am

At Swiss, German is a MUST also for GVA-based crew (In fact, I even doubt that there are GVA-based crews, I think they are all based in ZRH). French used to be a requirement during Swissair times, but it no longer is. That has resulted in quite a number of German FAs among the cabin crew, and they don't speak or understand French - which personally I don't like (even though I speak fluent German).

There are a couple of other countries who are officially bilingual but in practicality are not. Lebanon is one of them, with cabin crew usually speaking Arabic and their French and English being much more rudimentary or their French sometimes even virtually non-existent. No idea about Morocco, Tunisia?

SN535 · Mon Sep 30, 2013 6:43 am

Quoting OOSGB (Reply 23):
I could be wrong, but all FA job positions in SN require to be bilingual FR/NL (and EN of course)?

This is correct and is actually for most positions in companies over Belgium.

HELFAN · Mon Sep 30, 2013 6:57 am

Quoting axelesgg (Reply 18):

I think it is still a requirement for AY cabin crew to be at least trilingual: Finnish, Swedish, English. Many speak other languages as well. All announcements come in 3 languages and they often have additional taped announcements eg. in German, French & Dutch depending on the destination

okay · Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:37 am

Quoting HELFAN (Reply 29):

It is not a requirement anymore for AY staff to speak Swedish. And I think there is no need for that. Finland's Swedish people are almost all bilingual and Swedes never appreciate it if one tries to speak Swedish (though they expect it).

HELFAN · Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:46 am

Quoting okAY (Reply 30):

OK, but why don't the Swedes like us to speak Swedish to them? That's new to me. Maybe some Swedish A.Netters can comment on that.

okay · Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:57 am

Langauge politics is a bit hitt and miss at AY at the moment. They don't require the nation's second official language anymore, but at the same time they want Asian crew due to langauge barriers.

Quoting HELFAN (Reply 31):
why don't the Swedes like us to speak Swedish to them?

That is one for the Swedes to answer but I for one, after having lived in Sweden for four years got bored of "moomin svenska" (Moomin swedish) comments and questions like "why people in Finland speak Swedish?" Like dude, it is your own country's history... So, I made the decision to stop speaking Swedish to Swedes unless it benefits me somehow (ie. professionally) A bit off topic now, sorry for that!

bwest · Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:58 am

From my frequent flights with them I do get the feeling SN definitely has more Dutch speaking then French speaking cc. And they all do speak the other language quite well. When I overhear them talking, there's often an interesting mix of Dutch and French going on.

An example I would say for the rest of the Belgians, where a large part only has faint notions of their compatriates language. Though I've noticed there is an interesting shift going on. Where in the past, generally speaking, Flemish people all used to be rather good at French, now the younger generation isn't anymore at all; while the opposite is happening with the French speaking Belgians. There, the younger generation actually more and more learns Dutch, as opposed to their parents who usually don't speak a word of it. (I know, exceptions are to be found at both sides)

mozart · Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:59 am

Quoting lychemsa (Reply 26):
No, many French speaking crew on SWISS do not speak German and many of the German speakers don't speak French.

Definitely not true. No cabin crew at LX that doesn't speak German. Some don't speak Swiss-German (maybe that is what you meant) but all speak at least Germany-German.

Quoting lychemsa (Reply 26):
This has been my experience since I took my first SWISSAIR flight in 1954 and I must have made hundreds of Swissair / Swiss flights since then.

OK, I qualify my statement. I don't know about 1954-1995, but since then it definitely is not the case

330lover · Mon Sep 30, 2013 8:07 am

Quoting art (Thread starter):
Belgium (Flemish, French spoken)

Most of us seem to forget, but Belgium is

Quoting photoshooter (Reply 13):
a city/country with 3 official languages so I expect the cabin crew to know all three plus English.

Could not agree more ! Not only cabin crew though !

And as for trains in Belgium:

Quoting Scipio (Reply 22):
In Belgium, announcements in the train are in Dutch only in Flanders, in French only in Wallonia, and in Dutch and French in Brussels.

This is correct. Only on trains to/from Eupen, Welkenraedt (German speaking part), announcements are also made in German.
And IIRC, in the Brussels region, announcements are made first in Dutch, then in French in odd months and the other way around in even months (or vice versa).

But back to topic now...

bwest · Mon Sep 30, 2013 8:25 am

Quoting 330lover (Reply 35):
And IIRC, in the Brussels region, announcements are made first in Dutch, then in French in odd months and the other way around in even months (or vice versa).

There's probably a rule about it, but my daily communte teaches me that it depends more on the mood of the ticket inspector on the train than on anything else

German is a bit of a difficult thing. Even though it's an official language, it is only spoken by a very small part of the Belgians, I think not even 100.000 people. So I could forgive a cabin crew member for not speaking it.

I like the way how on some airlines like EY or KL, they make an announcement saying what languages the combined cabin crew speaks.

runway23 · Mon Sep 30, 2013 9:11 am

Quoting mozart (Reply 27):
At Swiss, German is a MUST also for GVA-based crew (In fact, I even doubt that there are GVA-based crews, I think they are all based in ZRH).

You are mistaken. German is not a requirement for GVA based crews. The crew base has just been re-opened this year.

You can see the job posting here: http://cabincrew.aviationjobs.me/2013/05/cabin-crew-swiss-geneva.html

Notice, that the requirement is bilingual in French and English only.

mjoelnir · Mon Sep 30, 2013 9:27 am

Quoting runway23 (Reply 37):
Quoting mozart (Reply 27):
At Swiss, German is a MUST also for GVA-based crew (In fact, I even doubt that there are GVA-based crews, I think they are all based in ZRH).

You are mistaken. German is not a requirement for GVA based crews. The crew base has just been re-opened this year.

You can see the job posting here: http://cabincrew.aviationjobs.me/2013/05/cabin-crew-swiss-geneva.html

Notice, that the requirement is bilingual in French and English only.

It is not a requirement for everybody hired. But they ask for person speaking more than the two languages and further training could add more skills.

For me as an Icelander it sounds a bit strange not being able to talk at least two foreign languages.

infinit · Mon Sep 30, 2013 9:44 am

Excuse my political incorrectness and I may be biased, coming from an English-native country- Singapore, but in this day and age, English should be the only language that flight crew communicate in. Especially the technical crew, but also the cabin crew.

In the event of an emergency the 3 seconds you take to comprehend a flight attendant instructions might make the distinction between life and death.

Of course, the majority of the world isn't native to English but by any yardstick, English is the de facto international language. It would be far more efficient to have all the crew in international airlines trained to use exclusively English onboard and that way passengers can be expected to have a basic comprehension when they fly.

On a recently NH flight, a friend of mine told me how none of the crew serving his cabin spoke English. I found that disturbing.

bwest · Mon Sep 30, 2013 10:58 am

Hm, imagine a flight from Paris to Geneva, or from Montevideo to El Paz where everything would have to be in English.

Also, I do believe that in emergency situations all orders from the crew are given in English.

AirGAbon · Mon Sep 30, 2013 11:38 am

For instance in Morocco, Royal Air Maroc crew will make the annoucements in Arabic, French, English. It has been always the case each time I flew with them. And it must be the same thing with Tunisair and Air Algerie.

SN535 · Mon Sep 30, 2013 12:19 pm

Quoting infinit (Reply 39):
It would be far more efficient to have all the crew in international airlines trained to use exclusively English onboard and that way passengers can be expected to have a basic comprehension when they fly.

I have been on many flights where we carried pax who only spoke and understood their native language. All official communication such as announcements and orders/directions during emergencies must be in English. When it comes to customer service, why not speak the language of the passenger if you can?

pqdtw · Mon Sep 30, 2013 12:52 pm

A different twist maybe how a US carrier handles the announcements:

I fly for Delta and am an official Dutch speaker. As such I fly to BRU regularly. On our flights from ATL to BRU and JFK to BRU we have one Dutch speaker, and one French speaker. Officially, I am not the French speaker on board, but I speak French as well.

The easiest would be for me to address each passenger in English, but I find that to be lazy. I usually try to pick up some sort of clue as to which language the passenger speaks. The clues I use are: is the passenger reading a Dutch-language or French-language book or newspaper? Or, if the passenger speaks to me before I speak to them, I listen to the accent or their word choice in English. Almost always I can tell by the accent whether they are Francophone or Nederlandstalig.

It can be quite mind bending to switch between three languages all at once, but it's part of the fun of working those flights.

As far as which language comes first on PA's after English, i.e. Dutch or French, it's whichever one of us gets to the PA first. Often times one or the other is busy helping a passenger or doing something, so one does the announcements and the other follows when he/she can get to the handset.

HELFAN · Mon Sep 30, 2013 4:50 pm

I once flew a domestic flight in Finland on a Saab 340 with only 3 pax onboard. We were all 100% native Finnish speakers which the cabin attendant clearly could notice when she greeted us when we boarded. Still the she followed the correct procedure and made all the announcements in Finnish, Swedish and English. That felt kind of funny

Aesma · Mon Sep 30, 2013 4:59 pm

Quoting infinit (Reply 39):
Excuse my political incorrectness and I may be biased, coming from an English-native country- Singapore, but in this day and age, English should be the only language that flight crew communicate in. Especially the technical crew, but also the cabin crew.

In the event of an emergency the 3 seconds you take to comprehend a flight attendant instructions might make the distinction between life and death.

Of course, the majority of the world isn't native to English but by any yardstick, English is the de facto international language. It would be far more efficient to have all the crew in international airlines trained to use exclusively English onboard and that way passengers can be expected to have a basic comprehension when they fly.

On a recently NH flight, a friend of mine told me how none of the crew serving his cabin spoke English. I found that disturbing.

Take your car and drive a few miles out of Singapore, I'm sure you can find many people who don't understand one word of English. In an emergency you're supposed to do what was explained at the beginning (in multiple languages so most passengers get it), if you don't understand during the emergency, look for what the others are doing.

OOSGB · Mon Sep 30, 2013 5:37 pm

Legally speaking, language requirements only apply to state-owned companies like NMBS/SNCB the Belgian national railway company (or the BRU airport, which is under federal administration), not to private companies. SN or any private airline is free to determine the language to serve its customers (of course, it would be commercially insane for any Belgian airline not to serve its customers in all the Belgian languages). I understand that in Canada AC has linguistic requirements détermined by the law.

LONGisland89 · Mon Sep 30, 2013 5:51 pm

Slightly off topic, but is it fair to lump Swiss German and German as one language? They sound just as different as Portuguese and Italian.

runway23 · Mon Sep 30, 2013 10:44 pm

Quoting LONGisland89 (Reply 47):
Slightly off topic, but is it fair to lump Swiss German and German as one language?

Yes, Swiss German is a dialect, although in written form both are identical. Of course, there are also regional differences that apply.

It is similar to French spoken in France and French spoken in Quebec.

prosa · Mon Sep 30, 2013 11:20 pm

What about flights in China? Some of the versions of Chinese are barely intelligible to speakers of other versions. Is Mandarin used as the default language?

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