Captain_Anonymous
September 28, 2000, 12:31 PM
"During a year with a record number of flight delays, passengers have come to expect late departures. But if you're flying US Airways, your pilot might not tell you that, at least not in those words"
Read the following interesting article:
By Blake Morrison
USA TODAY
During a year with a record number of flight delays, passengers have come to expect late departures. But if you're flying US Airways, your pilot might not tell you that, at least not in those words.
Although pilots are encouraged to talk to passengers frequently over the public address system, using words such as ''late'' or ''turbulence,'' let alone ''thunderstorm,'' is discouraged.
Instead, according to a US Airways guide, a captain should stick to stating the new departure time, call turbulence ''bumpy air'' and refer to a thunderstorm as a ''rain shower.''
US Airways isn't alone in offering such tips. Other airlines, including TWA, Delta and United, also provide pilots with training to help them talk to passengers. Some work with captains to help them perfect their deliveries, in speed and intonation. One, Northwest, even gleans suggestions from fearful fliers to provide pilots with ''do's and don'ts.''
The approach to cabin announcements has become the industry norm, airline officials say. And the philosophy behind it is simple: With air rage becoming frequent and cabins being crowded and cramped, a captain's cockpit manner might make the difference between a few minutes of frustration and an hours-long flight from hell.
''It's sort of like being a crisis-control manager,'' says Colleen Cotter, a linguist at Georgetown University. ''You don't want to yell fire in a crowded movie theater, and you don't want to yell thunderstorm in a packed airplane.''
Moreover, airlines reason, good announcements help business. ''Pilots have the opportunity to sell the passenger his or her next airline ticket on every single leg we fly,'' Delta's guide to announcements advises. ''A well-placed, well-thought-out PA can either be a sales help and a high point of a passenger's flight or a total waste of time and a negative factor in their choice for their next flight.''
To some, the word play -- regardless of motive -- might seem deceptive. But Cotter and airline officials consider it smart. ''Language is used to accomplish a goal,'' Cotter says. ''And if the goal is to have a cabin full of fairly satisfied, non-anxious passengers, you can't really argue with that.''
'Not just an excuse'
In fact, some pilots say they are being more open than ever with travelers, particularly in a year as backed up as this. Last month, while a Denver-to-Chicago flight remained on the ground, United pilot Herb Hunter brought printouts of weather forecasts into the cabin to explain a delay. ''I wanted people to see that the weather was a real problem and not just an excuse,'' Hunter explains.
Delta even teaches its pilots to make ground-delay announcements while standing in the cabin, reminding captains never to be too technical because ''passengers don't speak 'pilot.' ''
''There's been a real renaissance in the way we talk to the passengers,'' says Stephen Luckey, a longtime Northwest pilot who has flown commercially for the past 33 years.
''The aircraft environment is a breeding ground for anxiety and terms like 'to your final destination' are words that we avoid, that may arouse latent fears. But we tell passengers the truth more than we ever did before.''
The commitment to candor has its limitations. Omitting certain information -- especially details pilots consider trivial -- is encouraged.
If a severe storm is 40 miles away, for instance, a pilot likely won't call attention to it. ''If there's something that I think is going to harm them, I'm going to tell them,'' says Robert Sumwalt, a veteran US Airways pilot of more than 20 years. ''But I don't want to worry them with all these details that won't pan out.''
Sometimes, pilots at Northwest might read in the company magazine tips from fearful fliers whom they unwittingly scared.
''We had one customer . . . who had said to the pilot, 'I'm so afraid to fly,' and the pilot said, 'Oh, I am, too,' '' recalls Liz Harrison, who coordinates the airline's fear of flying program. ''Then, over the PA, after they hit some rough air, the pilot said, 'Forgive me. I'm just learning,' trying to be funny.''
Never say 'terminal'
Harrison and others say such statements make passengers more nervous, as do words such as ''terminal'' (''to a fearful flier, it means 'death,' '' she says) and even ''fog.''
Passengers ''associate airplanes crashing in the fog,'' explains Gary van Hartogh, US Airways' flight training supervisor. The preferred words? Mist, haze, or even restricted visibility, van Hartogh says.
At Delta, the flight crew guide to cabin announcements advises pilots to avoid the term ''aborted takeoff.'' According to the guide, ''the word abort has a negative effect.'' The suggested PA: ''We apologize for the inconvenience in discontinuing the takeoff, but there was an inconsistency between two of our instruments.''
''We have to be very careful in the way we communicate with people,'' explains Charlie Tutt, Delta's chief pilot. To pilots, he says, terms such as ''turbulence'' and ''aborted takeoff'' aren't alarming. ''But the public perception of these terms is far different.''
Still, many passengers say they would prefer to hear the pilot say something rather than nothing at all. Mystery fosters anxiety, travelers say, and the antidote is honesty, even if the news isn't good.
Stan Laegried, an architect from Seattle, flies more than 200,000 miles a year. Four years ago, during a flight into Denver, the pilot told passengers of ''a very interesting natural phenomenon'' on the left side of the jet, Laegried recalls. ''It was a tornado.
''They brought it to our attention because I think they figured we would have seen it anyway,'' he says of the pilot's announcement. ''But given that they brought it to our attention and they said it calmly, I didn't see anyone panicking.''
Keeping passengers calm
A pilot's cool demeanor also helped passengers remain calm in late July on a British Airways Concorde that began reeking of fuel during a London-to-New York trip.
Days before, an Air France Concorde had crashed, killing all 109 people aboard. Naturally, the smell of fuel left those flying the British Airways jet ''nervous,'' passenger Jim O'Shaughnessy recalls.
With 57 passengers, including singer Tony Bennett, aboard, the flight was diverted and the jet landed safely in Gander, in the Canadian province of Newfoundland. But before diverting, O'Shaughnessy says, ''the captain came on and said due to an odd odor in the back he was electing to put safety first and make an emergency landing . . . We thought that he was acting prudently, he was doing the right thing.''
Such cockpit calm should come as no surprise. At some airlines, neither the pilot's response nor his manner of speaking is left to chance. More than two decades ago, author Tom Wolfe foreshadowed today's training when he wrote of the prototypic ''voice of the airline pilot.''
''Who doesn't know that voice! And who can forget it? . . . That particular voice may sound vaguely Southern or Southwestern, but it is specifically Appalachian in origin,'' he wrote in The Right Stuff. ''Airline pilots, pilots from Maine and Massachusetts and the Dakotas and Oregon and everywhere else, began to talk in that poker-hollow West Virginia drawl, or as close to it as they could bend their native accents,'' Wolfe wrote. ''It was the drawl of the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff: Chuck Yeager.''
Of course, most of today's pilots weren't even flying during Yeager's test pilot days. But in the years since, many have heard the stories of that fabled intonation. ''Somebody said years ago that it actually makes the passengers more at ease when they hear a relaxed Southern accent,'' recalls pilot Sumwalt. He and others say they don't buy it.
Says Jim Walters, a longtime TWA pilot: ''I try not to be too folksy. I want my passengers to be assured of the competence of the crew. I don't want to ever give the impression that we're just a bunch of good ol' boys.''
Sumwalt agrees. ''With me, I'm conscious of my Southern accent,'' he says, ''and when I make a PA, I try to sound more broadcast.''
Four years ago, Sumwalt says, he and other pilots worked on their speaking voices during training sessions in Winston-Salem, N.C. There, a handful of US Airways pilots wandered a hotel parking lot, carrying microcassette recorders and taping mock announcements. ''We were milling around because we felt somewhat ridiculous doing this,'' Sumwalt says. ''But it's just part of the professionalism.''
When they headed inside, they played their tapes for the other pilots, who critiqued the efforts, van Hartogh says. Such training continues to be offered today, he says.
After all, as the US Airways manual reminds: ''A friendly tone of voice tends to make people like the speaker, and if people like the speaker, they are much more likely to like what he or she has to say.''
And as Delta's suggests: ''Upbeat, happy attitudes sound much better than somber seriousness.''
Some like it with a laugh
Even so, airline manuals discourage jocularity. ''Humor,'' Delta's guide says, ''is best left up to professionals, and even they get in trouble from time to time.''
Regardless, such admonitions haven't stopped some pilots, including US Airways' Hunt Harris, who in 1988 began reading what he calls ''plane verse'' poetry to passengers to ''put them at ease.''
''Now, I try to have a poem for every occasion,'' says Harris, who has been flying for more than 30 years.
Although Harris says a former US Airways official praised him for his efforts, flight training supervisor van Hartogh isn't as positive. ''We want to be the McDonald's of PA announcements. We want everyone to give the same one.''
Uniformity isn't what passenger Laegried says he craves. He'll take candor with his bag of peanuts and maybe a lighthearted line.
He still recalls a late arrival earlier this year on an America West flight from Seattle to Las Vegas. As the passengers prepared to deplane about two hours late, the pilot offered this quip: ''He said, 'For those of you visiting Las Vegas, we wish you good luck. And for those of you hoping to make connections, we wish you good luck.'
''Everyone laughed, but I thought that was very up front of him,'' Laegried says. ''You really appreciate it when someone in the airline business is being straightforward.''
[This message has been edited by Captain Anonymous (edited September 29, 2000).]
Read the following interesting article:
By Blake Morrison
USA TODAY
During a year with a record number of flight delays, passengers have come to expect late departures. But if you're flying US Airways, your pilot might not tell you that, at least not in those words.
Although pilots are encouraged to talk to passengers frequently over the public address system, using words such as ''late'' or ''turbulence,'' let alone ''thunderstorm,'' is discouraged.
Instead, according to a US Airways guide, a captain should stick to stating the new departure time, call turbulence ''bumpy air'' and refer to a thunderstorm as a ''rain shower.''
US Airways isn't alone in offering such tips. Other airlines, including TWA, Delta and United, also provide pilots with training to help them talk to passengers. Some work with captains to help them perfect their deliveries, in speed and intonation. One, Northwest, even gleans suggestions from fearful fliers to provide pilots with ''do's and don'ts.''
The approach to cabin announcements has become the industry norm, airline officials say. And the philosophy behind it is simple: With air rage becoming frequent and cabins being crowded and cramped, a captain's cockpit manner might make the difference between a few minutes of frustration and an hours-long flight from hell.
''It's sort of like being a crisis-control manager,'' says Colleen Cotter, a linguist at Georgetown University. ''You don't want to yell fire in a crowded movie theater, and you don't want to yell thunderstorm in a packed airplane.''
Moreover, airlines reason, good announcements help business. ''Pilots have the opportunity to sell the passenger his or her next airline ticket on every single leg we fly,'' Delta's guide to announcements advises. ''A well-placed, well-thought-out PA can either be a sales help and a high point of a passenger's flight or a total waste of time and a negative factor in their choice for their next flight.''
To some, the word play -- regardless of motive -- might seem deceptive. But Cotter and airline officials consider it smart. ''Language is used to accomplish a goal,'' Cotter says. ''And if the goal is to have a cabin full of fairly satisfied, non-anxious passengers, you can't really argue with that.''
'Not just an excuse'
In fact, some pilots say they are being more open than ever with travelers, particularly in a year as backed up as this. Last month, while a Denver-to-Chicago flight remained on the ground, United pilot Herb Hunter brought printouts of weather forecasts into the cabin to explain a delay. ''I wanted people to see that the weather was a real problem and not just an excuse,'' Hunter explains.
Delta even teaches its pilots to make ground-delay announcements while standing in the cabin, reminding captains never to be too technical because ''passengers don't speak 'pilot.' ''
''There's been a real renaissance in the way we talk to the passengers,'' says Stephen Luckey, a longtime Northwest pilot who has flown commercially for the past 33 years.
''The aircraft environment is a breeding ground for anxiety and terms like 'to your final destination' are words that we avoid, that may arouse latent fears. But we tell passengers the truth more than we ever did before.''
The commitment to candor has its limitations. Omitting certain information -- especially details pilots consider trivial -- is encouraged.
If a severe storm is 40 miles away, for instance, a pilot likely won't call attention to it. ''If there's something that I think is going to harm them, I'm going to tell them,'' says Robert Sumwalt, a veteran US Airways pilot of more than 20 years. ''But I don't want to worry them with all these details that won't pan out.''
Sometimes, pilots at Northwest might read in the company magazine tips from fearful fliers whom they unwittingly scared.
''We had one customer . . . who had said to the pilot, 'I'm so afraid to fly,' and the pilot said, 'Oh, I am, too,' '' recalls Liz Harrison, who coordinates the airline's fear of flying program. ''Then, over the PA, after they hit some rough air, the pilot said, 'Forgive me. I'm just learning,' trying to be funny.''
Never say 'terminal'
Harrison and others say such statements make passengers more nervous, as do words such as ''terminal'' (''to a fearful flier, it means 'death,' '' she says) and even ''fog.''
Passengers ''associate airplanes crashing in the fog,'' explains Gary van Hartogh, US Airways' flight training supervisor. The preferred words? Mist, haze, or even restricted visibility, van Hartogh says.
At Delta, the flight crew guide to cabin announcements advises pilots to avoid the term ''aborted takeoff.'' According to the guide, ''the word abort has a negative effect.'' The suggested PA: ''We apologize for the inconvenience in discontinuing the takeoff, but there was an inconsistency between two of our instruments.''
''We have to be very careful in the way we communicate with people,'' explains Charlie Tutt, Delta's chief pilot. To pilots, he says, terms such as ''turbulence'' and ''aborted takeoff'' aren't alarming. ''But the public perception of these terms is far different.''
Still, many passengers say they would prefer to hear the pilot say something rather than nothing at all. Mystery fosters anxiety, travelers say, and the antidote is honesty, even if the news isn't good.
Stan Laegried, an architect from Seattle, flies more than 200,000 miles a year. Four years ago, during a flight into Denver, the pilot told passengers of ''a very interesting natural phenomenon'' on the left side of the jet, Laegried recalls. ''It was a tornado.
''They brought it to our attention because I think they figured we would have seen it anyway,'' he says of the pilot's announcement. ''But given that they brought it to our attention and they said it calmly, I didn't see anyone panicking.''
Keeping passengers calm
A pilot's cool demeanor also helped passengers remain calm in late July on a British Airways Concorde that began reeking of fuel during a London-to-New York trip.
Days before, an Air France Concorde had crashed, killing all 109 people aboard. Naturally, the smell of fuel left those flying the British Airways jet ''nervous,'' passenger Jim O'Shaughnessy recalls.
With 57 passengers, including singer Tony Bennett, aboard, the flight was diverted and the jet landed safely in Gander, in the Canadian province of Newfoundland. But before diverting, O'Shaughnessy says, ''the captain came on and said due to an odd odor in the back he was electing to put safety first and make an emergency landing . . . We thought that he was acting prudently, he was doing the right thing.''
Such cockpit calm should come as no surprise. At some airlines, neither the pilot's response nor his manner of speaking is left to chance. More than two decades ago, author Tom Wolfe foreshadowed today's training when he wrote of the prototypic ''voice of the airline pilot.''
''Who doesn't know that voice! And who can forget it? . . . That particular voice may sound vaguely Southern or Southwestern, but it is specifically Appalachian in origin,'' he wrote in The Right Stuff. ''Airline pilots, pilots from Maine and Massachusetts and the Dakotas and Oregon and everywhere else, began to talk in that poker-hollow West Virginia drawl, or as close to it as they could bend their native accents,'' Wolfe wrote. ''It was the drawl of the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff: Chuck Yeager.''
Of course, most of today's pilots weren't even flying during Yeager's test pilot days. But in the years since, many have heard the stories of that fabled intonation. ''Somebody said years ago that it actually makes the passengers more at ease when they hear a relaxed Southern accent,'' recalls pilot Sumwalt. He and others say they don't buy it.
Says Jim Walters, a longtime TWA pilot: ''I try not to be too folksy. I want my passengers to be assured of the competence of the crew. I don't want to ever give the impression that we're just a bunch of good ol' boys.''
Sumwalt agrees. ''With me, I'm conscious of my Southern accent,'' he says, ''and when I make a PA, I try to sound more broadcast.''
Four years ago, Sumwalt says, he and other pilots worked on their speaking voices during training sessions in Winston-Salem, N.C. There, a handful of US Airways pilots wandered a hotel parking lot, carrying microcassette recorders and taping mock announcements. ''We were milling around because we felt somewhat ridiculous doing this,'' Sumwalt says. ''But it's just part of the professionalism.''
When they headed inside, they played their tapes for the other pilots, who critiqued the efforts, van Hartogh says. Such training continues to be offered today, he says.
After all, as the US Airways manual reminds: ''A friendly tone of voice tends to make people like the speaker, and if people like the speaker, they are much more likely to like what he or she has to say.''
And as Delta's suggests: ''Upbeat, happy attitudes sound much better than somber seriousness.''
Some like it with a laugh
Even so, airline manuals discourage jocularity. ''Humor,'' Delta's guide says, ''is best left up to professionals, and even they get in trouble from time to time.''
Regardless, such admonitions haven't stopped some pilots, including US Airways' Hunt Harris, who in 1988 began reading what he calls ''plane verse'' poetry to passengers to ''put them at ease.''
''Now, I try to have a poem for every occasion,'' says Harris, who has been flying for more than 30 years.
Although Harris says a former US Airways official praised him for his efforts, flight training supervisor van Hartogh isn't as positive. ''We want to be the McDonald's of PA announcements. We want everyone to give the same one.''
Uniformity isn't what passenger Laegried says he craves. He'll take candor with his bag of peanuts and maybe a lighthearted line.
He still recalls a late arrival earlier this year on an America West flight from Seattle to Las Vegas. As the passengers prepared to deplane about two hours late, the pilot offered this quip: ''He said, 'For those of you visiting Las Vegas, we wish you good luck. And for those of you hoping to make connections, we wish you good luck.'
''Everyone laughed, but I thought that was very up front of him,'' Laegried says. ''You really appreciate it when someone in the airline business is being straightforward.''
[This message has been edited by Captain Anonymous (edited September 29, 2000).]