The captain's PA: the great ones, the terrible ones, and the one that made a whole cabin laugh at 4am
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#1 Nine years of listening to captains talk to a cabin and I have a collection. The PA is a strange art: some pilots are naturals, some read a script in a voice that could put a stadium to sleep, and some should not be allowed near the handset. Let us rank them.
The great
The captain who does the weather like a sports commentator: 'a line of showers coming through Biscay, we will go around the top of them, you will feel it for about ten minutes and then it is smooth to Madrid'. Every passenger relaxes. Every crew member plans the service.
The captain who names the crew in the welcome PA. 'You are being looked after today by Sarah, Paul, Amina and Josh.' The cabin looks at us differently. It costs nothing.
The captain who tells the truth about the delay in plain words and says when the next update will be, and then gives the update on time.
The terrible
The mumbler. Forty seconds of sound, no information.
The legal disclaimer. Every possible caveat, in order, in a monotone. The cabin does not know if we are going to Lisbon or being sued.
The joker who is not funny. 'Please do not push the flight attendant call button unless you want to see them run' has not been funny since 1994 and is still said weekly.
The one who says 'a little bit of light chop' before the worst turbulence of the year, every time, because pilots are constitutionally unable to say 'this will be rough'.
The one that made a cabin laugh at 4am
A red eye from Las Vegas, a cabin of hungover people, and a captain who came on at top of descent and said, gently: 'Ladies and gentlemen, we are beginning our descent into London where the weather is grey, 11 degrees, and disappointed in you. Please return your seats to the upright position and your lives to their normal state.' The cabin laughed. Properly. He is a legend and he knows it.
Your best and worst. No names, as ever.
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#2 The weather as sports commentary captain is the one I want on every flight. The crew plan the service around it and the passengers stop grabbing sleeves. BA has a few and we know their names and we are happy when they are on the crew list.
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#3 United has the legal disclaimer captain in large numbers. It is a training thing, I think. The best ones break the script once, at the end, with a real sentence, and it is the sentence people remember.
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#4 Ryanair, and our captains have 25 minutes on the ground and a script, and the great ones do the script fast and then add ten seconds of human. The ten seconds of human is the whole PA.
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#5 Jetstar, Bali inbound, and a captain who said 'we are landing in Sydney where it is 14 degrees and your tan will fade by Thursday' and the whole cabin groaned and then laughed. The groan laugh is the best PA reaction.
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#6 @sunnysyd23 the groan laugh is peak PA. Only the truly great achieve it.
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#7 JAL, and the Japanese PA is formal and beautiful and never funny, and the one time a captain made a small joke in English on a Honolulu flight the Japanese cabin was confused and the American cabin was delighted. Cultural PA gap.