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A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

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Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#51

Post by maxbond »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #5

I doubt the veracity of this account, at all. The liability from flying a malfunctioning, compromised plane is way too high for this to happen more than once.

Not an aviator, but planes can & do fly with malfunctioning noncritical components all the time. I don't know whether the PA system is considered critical or not, but it also didn't appear to be nonfunctional; the article said the pilots were able to use it & that their signal appeared to have a higher priority.

I don't know if this is true or not either, but I don't think we can reject it on it's face.

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#52

Post by Kon-Peki »

MBCook wrote: post #36
abeppu wrote: post #33

Why would there be a "medical intercom" as one quoted redditor suggested? Surely in the event of a medical emergency the crew can communicate about it with the same systems they use for everything else?

It may be to allow the flight attendants, taking care of the passenger, to speak directly to a ground crew without having to relay things to other people on the plane back-and-forth to the radio.

I’ve been on a flight where they used the medical intercom. Nobody is going to use it without a whole lot of people noticing.

And yes, it is there so the attendants can talk directly to medical personnel on the ground while attending to the person needing care.

PS - “intercom” is probably going to give people the wrong idea. It’s a headset with a thick black 50-foot long cord, and when you plug it in, it dangles down on top of passengers before getting to the aisle. Also, you can’t hear it - only the person wearing the headset hears anything…

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#53

Post by wildrhythms »

rx_tx wrote: post #6

For those interested in the various aircraft systems for PA (public address) and aircraft status system for aircrew, I found this interesting training doc PDF online [1] for the A320/321. I have been looking at section "03-010 CABIN INTERCOMMUNICATION DATA SYSTEM" It does not mention the "medical intercom jacks" in overhead bins that are mentioned at the end of the article [1]: https://caisatech.net/uploads/XXI_3_AIR…

I'm struggling to understand how this would explain the account here:

>Then the master power button up at 1L for the cabin power kept getting I pushed so it would shut off all the IFE, seat power and outlets. I had to push the button on again about 3 times inflight. Then the 2 got a call with the same groaning noise and thought it was one of us playing a joke but it wasn't us.

>It certainly was freaking all of us and the passengers. They wanted off the plane as bad as we did. The 2 be FAs said they had been on the plane the other day and the same thing happened. I had a visual on each FA when the noise would come over the PA and one time when the FO was doing a break so unless the captain was playing a long sick, joke I don't have an explanation.

https://twitter.com/xJonNYC/status/1572358118985633795

Any ideas?

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#55

Post by kaetemi »

You don't need physical access to interfere with an analog audio system. (Remember old cellphones?) Since they're saying it's an issue with the amplifier, I'm assuming someone found a weak spot that readily gets picked up by the system's input.

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#56

Post by jsemrau »

aerovistae wrote: post #54
alphabetting wrote: post #17

I could definitely be wrong but my go-to assumption when the source originates from Tiktok is to assume it's fake or staged.

This is on multiple social media sites - did you read the article?

A new social media marketing strategy?

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#57

Post by MisterTea »

bombcar wrote: post #15
gumby wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only think this because the airlines normally suppress them.

Ghosts go to heaven but that’s high in the sky. Planes fly higher and higher for better fuel efficiency and are starting to capture some of the lower ghosts. Boeing is suppressing this.

Lost souls on Boeing planes isn't too far fetched. Lord Xenu flew in all those thetans on rocket powered DC-8's which were originally made by McDonnell Douglas who merged with Boeing. Basically Snakes on a Plane but with souls and Tom Cruise.

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#59

Post by MisterTea »

duxup wrote: post #7

The dongle idea is interesting but are we assuming someone is plugging in a dongle and making noises, on all these flights, sometimes for the duration of the flight and nobody finds these dongles?

So we're looking for #donglechallenge or similar?

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#60

Post by _zzaw »

babelfish wrote: post #27
upwardbound wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably they would unplug the dongle at the end of the flight while they retrieve their overhead luggage

Assuming it’s one person with the dongle responsible for all 3-4 instances of this - it would be pretty easy for AA to figure out who’s doing it if this is the case, just check if there’s a common passenger on every flight where the issue was reported

That, or a particular employee—maintenance or grounds crew—who serviced those planes.

Seems like whoever's doing this knows those systems unusually well, given that their own personnel don't know how it's done.

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