Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

waxy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 301 posts

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

#121

Post by shon »

Waterluvian wrote: post #99
iudqnolq wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Whoever ... causes to be made unworkable or unusable ... any part ... used in connection with the operation of such aircraft, if such placing ... is likely to endanger the safety of any such aircraft" The "part" is the PA system. While the device is playing the prank sound, it is temporarily "made unworkable" for its intended purpose of allowing the crew to communicate with the passangers. This "endangers the safety…

I don’t deny that it’s an important safety system. I’m curious, though, if they’re treated like safety critical systems in design or if emergency training covers how to act if the PA is down. I’ve got to believe it’s safety critical.

Agreed, safety critical, used in emergencies and non-emergencies for safety procedures.

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

#122

Post by maxbond »

This reminded me of something that happened to me in college. This is a unlikely sounding story, but I swear it's the truth.

I started noticing some odd sounds in the Student Union building. One day I had some time and decided to investigate. I realized it was coming from a fire alarm. I stood under the alarm and listened for a while.

The alarm was quietly whistling "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk.

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

#123

Post by exmadscientist »

w-ll wrote: post #108
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…

My best guess its an unfunny "Easter Egg" that triggers after something like 5,000 hours of uptime. I think I remember some bug in Boeing or some other system that they need to actually be rebooted every 100 days.

I'm one of those people who thinks easter eggs are great, and miss the days when you had a decent chance of coming across one in a program or game.

The FAA does not agree with that. The FAA probably thinks that easter eggs in avionics software are a crime. And I agree with that position! Aviation, medical, military, and any other critical software should not contain easter eggs, and it should be an offense to knowingly include one. Stuff like this (even though it's probably not an easter egg) is a great example why. Just imagine the cost to patch this if it's widespread... and it has to be patched, because this one can literally kill people if you don't fix it (think spooked flight crews making rushed or generally poor decisions if you don't think this is potentially lethal).

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

#124

Post by jonny_eh »

operator1 wrote: post #114

I know little about airplane tech, but do these onboard systems such as PA ever get OTA software updates? Perhaps an update got pushed that runs the prank? Could explain it happening on multiple flights and attendants being unable to stop it.

I think some kind of overlooked physical access to the system is the simplest explanation, since it would even effect an analogue system. Imagine there was some kind of mic input in the bathroom for some reason you could hook up a device to.

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

#125

Post by exmadscientist »

operator1 wrote: post #114

I know little about airplane tech, but do these onboard systems such as PA ever get OTA software updates? Perhaps an update got pushed that runs the prank? Could explain it happening on multiple flights and attendants being unable to stop it.

I've never heard of automatic updates for avionics. It's all under MX or operations control.

But that's a moot point if it really is happening on both B737s and A321s.

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

#127

Post by gre »

maxbond wrote: post #122

This reminded me of something that happened to me in college. This is a unlikely sounding story, but I swear it's the truth. I started noticing some odd sounds in the Student Union building. One day I had some time and decided to investigate. I realized it was coming from a fire alarm. I stood under the alarm and listened for a while. The alarm was quietly whistling "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk.

Someone in my engineering school opened the elevator panel and had it play a clip from the matrix (the full quote about there being no spoon) when you pressed a floor button.

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

#128

Post by _zzaw »

exmadscientist wrote: post #123
w-ll wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My best guess its an unfunny "Easter Egg" that triggers after something like 5,000 hours of uptime. I think I remember some bug in Boeing or some other system that they need to actually be rebooted every 100 days.

I'm one of those people who thinks easter eggs are great, and miss the days when you had a decent chance of coming across one in a program or game. The FAA does not agree with that. The FAA probably thinks that easter eggs in avionics software are a crime. And I agree with that position! Aviation, medical, military, and any other critical software should not contain easter eggs, and it should be an offense to knowing…

Reminds me of when a security researcher discovered that, in addition to some serious security flaws, certain Siemens PLCs had monkeys hidden in their firmware: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/08/serio...

According to the researcher who found it, "they didn’t think it was very funny.”

I love easter eggs myself—classic Apple software in particular had a lot of these, and I really miss finding them—but they're admittedly a risk. I remember one obscure Easter egg in Mac OS 7.6 that occasionally caused crashes at boot time after displaying a bizarre message about how "bluets and granola bars / make a chewy snack". Cute, but probably not something Apple wants to be getting customer support requests about.

As far as the topic at hand, I don't believe these weird noises are an Easter egg, either. I'd guess it's a recording patched in somehow by someone who works for the airline.

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

#130

Post by noduerme »

mhh__ wrote: post #71
uni_rule wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age, probably. Young kids aren't that smart.

A lot of what I am complaining about is actually people older than me peddling "advise" - how to become a data analyst (no understanding of data required!). It just feels like Facebook-tier people given the content equivalent of a machine gun.

Having never been on TikTok and only seeing embeds of videos from it, this checks out.
Post reply on HN