On board an aircraft the crew does lots of announcements. They are constantly remembering people to fasten their seatbelts, to remain seated, to be careful when they open the luggage lockers and many more announcements related to security and commercial ones reminding people what there is for sale in bar, the offer of the month, about the duty free items or the annoying lottery cards. Why do we need so many? There is so much useful and useless information given that people simply don't listen.
Often announcements are done in a language that is not widely understood, in a strange aviation jargon that only the crew understand, like “my carry on luggage having been dislodged during the flight”, that surely many English speakers wouldn't be capable to understand. Or in an incorrect grammar, or if correct but with such a strange foreign accent that needs too much effort to process. Frequent flyers and people who don't care at all if the rest are interested in what it's said, talk even during the safety demo when is not played in their own language, preventing others to understand. And all without forgetting some impossible to digest melodies, constant beeps and the engine noise. Oh what a pleasure flying is! In one occasion a cabin crew remembered passengers to switch off their seat belts (mobile phones I supposed he wanted to say) and nobody noticed anything. There wasn't a single smile, not a single glance to the front to see what was going on. Pilots' announcements are even harder to understand. Because they tend more to use too many aviation terms, supposing that passengers will be expecting to feel those north-easterly winds in their faces when they disembark the aircraft and to say wow! when they are told that the temperature outside at cruising altitude is minus 50C.
And by the way, I only recently found out that a nautical mile are 1850m and are different than land miles. Please make it easier! On the other hand I like it when they say that we can see this or that place if we look through the window. Some announcements are necessary, like the ones related with security, but even those could be said in more simple way. And if you are lucky that day and your purser has a nice voice, they might even sound quite nice pronounced in a in a soft and well-modulated tone. Apart from that, all I wish is to sit back, relax and enjoy the flight.
