Captain's announcements

Hi All

Is it a policy now that the flight deck crew on vs dont give announcements or dont introduce themselves anymore. the past 5 flight i have been on the captain only spoke once and that was from miami to heathrow. the other flights were from manchester to orlando and we never heard from the pilot.

Also i am a fearful flyer and i have been told in the past to ask at the gates if i can meet the pilots before the doors shut, I know other airlines allow it but when i asked a member of the cabin crew as i was boarding they said they dont permit it.
Can anyone shed any light on this
Thank you

As far as I can remember, all my VS flights have had announcements from the cabin/first officer, including introductions.

My last VS flight was in March.

Sometimes they only do it once towards the beginning of boarding so if you're not on board when it happens you just get the FSM's into.

It's the flight deck perogative whether they want to do it or not. They have moody days just like the rest of us, so might not want to talk to anyone!!

It can also depend if they are very busy. They won't waste time making an announcement if they have paper work to fill out, etc. The VS flights I flew last year had announcements, BTW.

i must be just unlucky then lol

Quite often, particularly on night flight they keep all announcments to a minimum so as not to disturb people. Every flight I've been on the crew have said this in the initial announcement, and then you don't hear from them again until they come back on to tell you it's raining yet again at Heathrow and we'll be doing circuits of Essex for the next 45 minutes.

this is true.lol

Ive been on a fair few number of VS flights (d`uh) and Ive always had announcements by the flight deck. Normally one just prior to doors closing (time permiting) then one just before top of decent. As far as visiting them, they are normally quite happy to see people after arrival as this is a quieter time for them than before departure. I cant think why this would be any diff at MAN as its LHR/LGW based flightdeck up there aswell.

I've only ever been on a few flights where there was no announcement from the captain and only one of these was VS[:?]

VS.

I think it is more usual than not for the Captain to make a welcome announcement and introduce him or herself and anyone else on the flightdeck. They usually say who will actually be doing the flying that day and then at the top of descent, whoever was actually flying (be it Captain or First Officer) does the "we'll soon be landing and the weather is... " announcement. Whoever wasn't flying does the announcement on the ground which says "welcome to... and cabin crew doors to manual (or disarm doors on the Airbus) and cross check".

Of course, if a load of paperwork turns up just before departure the initial announcement might be missed.

Regards

EC

i must have got on the plane to late in order to here the captain.

Thank you for all your replys.

I must say I've, always had announcements from the crew up front.

Before most of you were flying, late 50's/ early '60s in aircraft like Dakotas etc there was no tannoy system to address the passengers. The noise from the engines was just too loud for any announcements to be heard.
I remember flying on several internal U.K. routes with my parents and during the flight two sheets of paper would come from the flightdeck, one for each row of passengers. This contained all the flight details:- altitude, speed, eta, wx at destination and the names of the flight crew - the usual sort of stuff that one hears today. As each row of passengers read the details they handed it to the seat behind and so on. Course that was in the days when cotton wool was handed out for ones' ears and we sucked on real barley sugar during take-off/landing. [:w]

The pre-take off stage is incredibly busy for the flight deck with pre-departure checks on all the plane systems, filing of final routes, load calculations and decisions to be made about unloading those final two pax who decide to stay in the pub rather than boarding on time[ii], as well as a gazillion other things to do. I would normally expect the flight crew to dedicate themselves to these tasks, particularly checking the plane will fly, rather than agreeing to meet pax I am afraid.

Having said that, on some internal flights the flight deck door is left open until just before departure. Often there is nothing stopping you saying Hi then, although a long chat may not be so welcome.

There are several threads of help to nervous fliers in the forum. If you use the search feature (top right) you should come up with some stuff.
Poll
Turbulance
Flying without fear course
What's going on!
relation to travel sickness