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Thunderstorms

  • Writer: Flight Attendant Phrases
    Flight Attendant Phrases
  • Jul 18, 2019
  • 2 min read

English: Thunderstorms

French: Orages


In English, we make the distinction between “storm” and “thunderstorm” as it’s possible to have a storm without thunder and lightning. In French, both are usually translated as just “orage” (m).


In English, pilots usually don't just announce that there’s a “storm”. They instead just say that it’s raining (heavily) and that the winds are strong. If necessary, they will announce that there are thunderstorms in the area. Thunderstorms can cause flight delays and cancellations. If there are thunderstorms between the origin and destination, chances are your pilots will be taking detours to avoid the thunderstorms.


Turbulence can get quite bad even flying near thunderstorms, which we want to avoid. Furthermore, you don’t want to fly through the thunderstorm and risk your airplane getting struck by lightning. Don’t worry though. Can a lightning strike mid-flight bring down a plane? Possible, if the damage is severe enough, but highly, highly improbable. Each commercial airplane on average gets struck by lightning once per year. And modern planes are designed to mitigate lightning strikes in flight. And again, your pilots will do their best to avoid the thunderstorms altogether. When thunderstorms hover right above an airport, take-offs and landings may need to be delayed until the storm passes.


Because it may cause delays or extra turbulence, this information is relevant to passengers. We can translate “there are some thunderstorms.”


Il y a=There is, there are

Des orages (m)=Some storms, some thunderstorms.

Il y a des orages à Montréal. There are some thunderstorms in Montreal.

Il y a des orages près de Winnipeg. There are some thunderstorms close to Winnipeg.


You’ll sometimes hear your francophone colleagues and passengers emphasize the distinction between “storm” and “thunderstorm” by saying “orage électrique” “electrical storm”. You do not need to do this as “orage” by itself is enough to imply lightning and thunder.

Want to learn to speak the French you need to work as a flight attendant? Learn even more with Canadian French for Flight Attendants.


Seoul, May 2019. Séoul, mai 2019. Seoul has quite a few bustling markets to visit and shopping is always quite interesting. And there's no shortage of street food, of course. My favourite were the socks. So many designs, so many choices! I bought a pair of Pikachu socks, Gangnam Style socks, Luigi socks, and Sailor Moon socks. Should've gotten the rest of the Sailor Moon characters...


The winds are strong.

  • Writer: Flight Attendant Phrases
    Flight Attendant Phrases
  • Jul 11, 2019
  • 2 min read

English: The winds are strong.

French: Les vents sont forts.


Instead of light winds, your pilots might say that the winds are strong or gusty. Even when winds are stronger, they usually don’t cause more than a normal amount of turbulence during take-off or landing, nor will they delay take-off or arrival and we still often choose to leave it out of our translations. Only when they mention specifically that strong winds may cause unforeseen amounts of turbulence or affect take-off or landing, do we make sure to include it in our translation. Even in this case, the exact speed and direction of the wind really don’t matter to the passengers. They simply care that the winds are strong enough to significantly affect their flight.


For now, you can translate this as “les vents sont forts”.

Les vents (m,pl)=The winds

Sont=Are

Fort=Strong.

Want to learn to speak the French you need to work as a flight attendant? Learn even more with Canadian French for Flight Attendants.


Seoul, May 2019. Séoul, mai 2019. There are several palaces and shrines in Seoul. The palaces were former residences for Korean royalty and the shrines were where they were buried. The video clip shows the end of a guard-changing ceremony at Gyeongbokgung. You'll notice that many people are wearing traditional Korean outfits. You can rent these outfits at places outside of the palaces for about 22,000 Wons (About $25 CAD), and wearing them grants you free entrance to the palaces. (It's still much cheaper to just pay the entrance fee.) Most of the palaces offer free, scheduled, guided tours in Korean, English, Chinese, and Japanese.



The winds are light.

  • Writer: Flight Attendant Phrases
    Flight Attendant Phrases
  • Jul 6, 2019
  • 2 min read

English: The winds are light.

French: Les vents sont légers.


Your pilots will often announce wind conditions. Wind speed and direction are important to pilots as it affects their flying and landing. Stronger winds at ground level may also cause a more turbulent ascent or descent. Wind direction at runway level also usually determines which runway is used for take-off and for landing, as planes generally need to take off and land into the wind.


For the passengers though, few if any really care what the wind speeds are or which direction they’re coming from. They may only care if the winds are going to cause significant turbulence during take-off or landing, or if the winds are strong enough to cause delays.


Take Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ) as an example and the diagram of the airport's five runways below. As a flight attendant in Canada, you'll very likely fly in and out of YYZ very often. (It's an older diagram from Wikipedia as Terminal 2 no longer exists, but is still pictured.) You can see that the airport has three east-west runways but only two north-south runways. As planes usually take off and land into the wind, if the winds are strong enough and coming from the north or south, the airport uses its two north-south runways instead of its three east-west runways to process all of its departures and arrivals. During this time, the airport cannot handle its traffic at its regular capacity and air traffic control may need to delay flights. The weather may be fine otherwise, but this is an example of how something as simple as wind direction may cause delays.

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When winds are light, they generally will not cause significant turbulence nor delays for take-off or landing, so when the pilots do mention that the winds are light, admittedly, we often drop this in our translation. Nevertheless, you can still translate this as “les vents sont légers”.


Les vents (m,pl)=The winds

Sont=Are

Léger=Light (not heavy)


Our Canadian French for Flight Attendants audio course also chooses to keep translations about wind to a bare minimum, only focusing on points that passengers care about. In our Module 4, we will also cover translations you can use during air traffic control delays, such as the one mentioned above.

Want to learn to speak the French you need to work as a flight attendant? Learn even more with Canadian French for Flight Attendants.


Seoul, May 2019. Séoul, mai 2019. This is the Korean War Memorial. The museum itself is free and a good learning experience, giving you some insight on the causes of the rift between the North and the South. Peace monuments are erected outside the museum. As a side note, they were also setting up for Seoul's Hip Hop festival that day in front of the memorial.


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