YP Letters: Pilots' public speaking skills fail to take flight

I WAS away on holiday when I saw a television programme about the training of young passenger airline pilots for a budget airline.

A young man was being filmed while flying a plane full of holidaymakers, and was making a very good job of doing so when a handset was passed to him and he was asked to make a flight progress announcement to the passengers.

The programme had shown the trainees’ careful and exacting progressive flying instruction but, as I have always believed, there was no evidence whatsoever of any guidance being provided before a public address announcement was transmitted into a noisy fuselage.

I often wonder if cabin staff who gabble incoherently or flight deck officers who mumble inaudibly would benefit from being told how to speak slower and more clearly.

If only they could sit in the middle of a plane load 
of holidaying families and 
listen to their own announcements, they 
may realise why their 
speeches are so often not fully appreciated, or even heard.