English for Cabin Crew Trainer's Guide - Heinle

UNIT
9 Case study
LEAD IN Speaking
Write on the board: Toilet troubles for Cathay. Ask students if
they can guess what the text will be about. Ask, Have you ever
experienced problems with toilets? What happened? What did you
do about it?
EXERCISE 1 Reading
Give students time to read the questions. Then ask them to read the text
and make notes. Let students discuss the answers in pairs before getting
feedback in open class.
Answers
1 All of the ten toilets on board became blocked soon after take-off.
2 The plane had to make an unscheduled landing in Mumbai.
Vocabulary in context
Write the following words on the board and ask students to match them
to synonyms in the text: can’t be moved (blocked); clear (obvious);
uncontrolled (chaos); stopped to an extent (restricted).
EXERCISE 2 Speaking
The aim here is to get students talking about their personal experiences.
Give students time to read through the questions and think of responses.
Ask them to discuss their responses in pairs or small groups. After a few
minutes, get one student from each pair or group to briefl y summarize
the main points of their discussion.
Pre-teaching vocabulary
Check the following key words: engage with passengers (talk to them);
gauge passengers (work out what sort of person they are); get to know
passengers (meet and become friends with them); appease passengers
(say things to calm them down when they are angry).
EXERCISE 3 and 4 Listening
Give students time to read the situation and questions in exercise 3. Play
the recording. Students listen, take notes and then discuss their answers
in pairs. Get feedback in open class at the end.
Follow the same procedure for exercise 4.
Answers
1 to be collected: meal trays, drinks, headsets, blankets (rubbish also
has to be collected, or ‘cleared in’); to be checked: landing cards,
seatbelts; to be handed out: immigration forms (then also to be
checked); to be secured: the cabin, the galley; to be stowed: trolleys
2 She hadn’t been given a landing card and there was only ten minutes
before landing. Shon’s crew had not advised her of this; there was a
breakdown in communication. The woman should have been given the
forms well in advance of landing.
3 pilot/co-pilot and passengers: minimal communication, usually
about the time of arrival, the weather, any delays, thanking passengers
for travelling with the airline
passengers and cabin crew: a lot of communication about preparing
the passengers for landing (having headsets ready for collection,
fi lling out landing cards and immigration forms, arrival procedures,
returning to seats and fastening seatbelts, etc.)
fl ight crew and cabin crew: very minimal communication apart from
advising that passengers and galley are ready for landing and the
cabin is secure
CD2 Track 9.8
1 Is preparing for landing easier than preparing for take-off?
S: Preparing for landing is more stressful actually than preparing for take-off
because with take-off you’ve got just the welcoming of passengers, the safety
checks and the preparation, but coming in for landing you’ve got the human
factor. You’ve got people sitting on board, you’ve got drinks and debris that
you’ve provided – well you haven’t provided the passengers with debris but
the meal trays, the drinks – all of that is still possibly out in the cabin, you’ve
got headsets that need to be collected, blankets that need to be collected,
landing cards that have to be checked, immigration forms that have to
be handed out and checked to make sure that passengers have completed
them correctly. On top of that you’ve got your checking of seatbelts and the
securing of the cabin and the galley, so coming in for landing is actually quite
stressful because there’s a lot going on during those fi nal sort of ten, fi fteen
minutes. You’re stowing trolleys, you’re securing the galley, you’re going into
the cabin, clearing in any rubbish. Also answering questions because people
are near their arrival so they want to now check with you that their fl ight is
on time or their connection is going to be there. They might want to ask you
questions about where do they pick their baggage up, and you’re doing all of
this while you are completing all the other pre-landing duties, so yes, landing
duties tend to be a lot more stressful than those for take-off.
2 Do you remember any special problems with passengers in the fi nal ten minutes?
S: I don’t remember any particular problems with passengers during that fi nal
ten minutes of landing, but occasionally, if I can recall one, I remember this
foreign lady. She had not completed any of the forms and the crew hadn’t
alerted me to this fact and as I was going through the cabin, checking
seatbelts and checking tables were stowed, etcetera, the neighbour sitting
next to this passenger actually just said to me, you know, this lady hasn’t got
a landing card and it was a bit of a panic because as the senior in charge of
the fl ight it’s my job to coordinate the landing so that all my crew are doing
what they should be doing and the cabin is secure, and suddenly I’d got this
lady that nobody had told me about, who didn’t speak a word of English, and
we were arriving in ten minutes and I had no history about her, so that was a
bit of a panic.
3 Can you briefl y outline communications in the fi nal phases of descent?
S: The fi nal phases of descent when the aircraft is preparing to land.
Sometimes there’s minimal communication between the pilot and the
passenger. It largely depends on what’s going on. I mean they may come
on to the inter-phone and just thank the passengers for travelling with
them. They may tell them of weather conditions that they’re expecting and
of course they will tell the passengers of the local time. Also in that last
ten minutes of fl ight the captain or co-pilot may just advise passengers of
any holding. You know, if the fl ight is being delayed for any reason, but
generally it’s, fairly, it’s kept to the minimum in terms of communication.
The captain will have made his announcement a good twenty minutes
prior to landing. That’s on long-haul fl ights. Obviously short-haul fl ights
it’s slightly different and the cockpit do tend to communicate with the
passengers a little closer to landing so they may hear something. Between
the passengers and the cabin crew there’s usually a lot of communication
going on, particularly on long-haul fl ights where various crew members
may be informing the passengers of the need to have headsets ready for
collection. There’ll be another announcement usually made about landing
cards and immigration forms and then there’s often communication from
the senior crew member who will be advising the passengers of arrival
procedures and there’s yet other announcements preparing the passengers
for landing such as please return to your seats and you need to fasten your
seatbelts now, so there’s quite a lot of communication going on between
passengers and cabin crew. Not so much between fl ight crew and passengers
and very minimal communication really between fl ight crew and cabin
crew other than the need for the cabin crew to inform the fl ight crew that
passengers and galleys are all ready for landing, and it’s usually kept to the
minimum, usually just simple sentences such as captain, cabin now secure,
or aircraft now secure.
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