Apr 04 2006
de-plane
Language certainly evolves at a high speed here in the US. Especially in the service industries. The Comair ‘flight attendant’* said:
“make sure you have all of your belongings before you de-plane“
De-plane? what’s wrong with ‘leave’, ‘get off’ ‘go’ or even the familiar previously used shipping terminology - ‘disembark’
“make sure your cell phone is in the off position’
Now this was just silly. I understand making sure my seat is in an upright position. This is just gratuitous wanton repetition of a phrase used in flight-attendant-land. SILLY. Then she repeated the same message for Laptops. SILLY. SILLY.
Are attendents told not to use normal language like ”turn your cell phones off?” WHY? I will ask if it happens again on my return flight.
* an air hostess or steward. I suspect that calling out the gender with different names is now considered politically incorrect, if enabling more descriptive precision. For one extra syllable you get increased ambiguity through being gender neutral and possibly the impression of some form of job status kudos…
1 inspirational thought about de-plane
