Devil’s Advocate Series: Can Public Address (PA) announcements from the flight deck make or break a flight experience?
- Prashant Kavi (PK)
- Dec 30, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 2
Within the last couple of weeks, I happened to take four domestic flights within India. Out of these, two were with Air India (AI), one on Air India Express (IX) and one on IndiGo (6E). The more celebrated of all these was my maiden flight on Air India’s brand-new flagship, the A350, and also my last of the set!
And while the whole A350 experience was a breath of fresh air – all round; a letdown for me personally, was the absence of any PA announcements from the flight deck! One would have thought, the proud pilots would have something to say about their ‘exciting new bird’, aside from the regular prescribed stuff. But there was absolutely nothing, not even the routine welcome note! And this was on a morning departure with a block time of about 3-hours; where it is safe to assume that things would not have been so busy where the flight crew did not find even a minute or so to make an inflight announcement for the courtesy of the passengers.
Now to many, this might sound like a ‘no big deal’, but I can tell you that I have observed and experienced in all of my years of flying, that this does make a huge difference!
But to complete the story of my travel experience first; aside from the Air India A350, I also flew on one of their new A320neo (old livery though) and again there was no announcement from the flight deck although the cabin crew were completely up to scratch.
One of the other flights was on an Air India Express A320ceo (exAirAsia India with the neither-here, nor-there livery!) – no announcement from the flight deck again! But I distinctly recall the inflight cabin lead made some very crisp and confident PA announcements with good diction to boot!
The only solitary IndiGo flight that I flew on their A321NX had a regulation and reassuring (if a bit off-color) PA announcement in cruise and then a brief one at the point of descent. The cabin crew were also (expectedly) up to scratch with their routine announcements.
And strangely, this despite having it on authority from a Pilot friend at Air India that PA announcements for air crew are ‘mandatory’ – “a welcome PA after 90% passengers have boarded or after take-off and when settled in cruise and a before-landing PA (typically as you prepare to descend)”. There is a caveat though to this policy and which adds, ‘time permitting’. So the air crew can always find an excuse to avoid making one if they really want to! Although the paucity of time really is a rarity, unless the pilots are preoccupied with an emergency and are bound to follow the unwritten, ANC or Aviate>Navigate>Communicate order of priority.
But Air India of yore (and even erstwhile Indian Airlines) were carriers, that you were pretty accustomed to not expect any PA announcements from the air crew. This was of course completely at par with the regressive culture prevalent at the airline at the time, with plain disinterest or lack of motivation and zero accountability.
IndiGo, I also learnt from a pilot friend and a senior commander, has a stated policy on inflight announcements from the air crew, “guidelines that are open to improvisation”. Must admit that the ‘improvisation’ bit caught me off-guard, knowing how well scripted (and therefore consistent) the whole IndiGo experience is! But the IndiGo air crew most consistently make those announcements and while some stick to the script others do go off-script, delightfully so in many instances!
But make or break a flight experience - really?
A crisp, clear announcement coming out of the flight deck, foremost, reflects the professionalism and discipline that we’ve all come to associate and appreciate with the profession of flying. It is also a reflection of the airline and its ethos, corelated directly to its standards of training and focus on enhancing the customer experience.
A friendly welcoming voice besides providing passengers with information on the flight, the weather conditions (minus the jargon!), such as expected turbulence enroute can be a balm for fearful fliers! Aviophobia is predominantly triggered in individuals out of stress of being captive in a closed, unfamiliar environment or a lack of control or turbulence. A confident, reassuring voice from the flight deck is the perfect panacea to mitigate those effects in such fliers.
And thanks to the proliferation of Aviation vlogs and airline reviews et al, providing passengers with nuggets of information on the aircraft and its systems, when possible, is a great way of engaging passengers especially the aviation enthusiasts! Even the ‘touristy’ announcements when flying over or near a significantly important area/event is always welcome and stirs up a lot of excitement amongst passengers.
But then equally detrimental could be superficial, jargon laden and muffled announcements with poor audio that seem to achieve just the opposite effect! And talk about total silence when inordinately waiting on the tarmac for take-off or endlessly circling the skies without landing and no explanation forthcoming from the flight deck.
With mainstream commercial airlines the world over, PA announcements from the flight deck are de rigueur and and an important element of the 'soft-product' (a term thrust into public prominence now following its exhaustive usage in airline review videos on YT!), as a vital passenger touchpoint, that adds-to or detracts-from the overall quality of the flying experience, in good measure. So next time when you fly and hear or don't hear anything from the flight deck - figure out if that made a difference to your overall flight experience!
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