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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

#151

Post by throwawaylinux »

maxbond wrote: post #64
gumby wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you brought that up because (no joke) nobody can actually explain how aerodynamic lift works, much less how a plane can fly upside down: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-one-can-explai...

My understanding is that planes don't fly directly upside down, and they angle the wing slightly to make a kinda-sorta-airfoil. How helicopters can turn directly upside down, and fly that way[1], without reversing the direction of their props, that I don't get. (Thinking about it now, I think it turns from a helicopter to a hovercraft? Eg, this is a ground effect?) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdDESYBdeSE Also…

Helicopter rotor blades can vary their angle of attack.

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

#152

Post by jonny_eh »

gaetgu wrote: post #137
jonny_eh wrote: post #126

Has no one noticed that this is only affecting a single airline? This implies an inside job by an employee, no?

Not necessarily. If I was to run a prank on airplanes, I would probably choose one airline. One one airline it can be dismissed as fake or an employee, etc. If it starts happening on multiple airlines, red flags start to go up all over the place and I would (theoretically, of course) start to be getting uncomfortably close to extremely hot water.

Or the pranker has air miles.

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

#153

Post by tzs »

bentobean wrote: post #139

Unrelated, but brings back memories… Back when I was in college some twenty years ago, we somehow managed to stumble upon a phone number we could call that would connect us directly to passengers in some unknown elevator car in some distant city. We had great fun with that for a while.

I was once in an elevator and the emergency phone starting ringing. I answered and it was a telemarketer trying to sell me a newspaper subscription.

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

#154

Post by afloyd »

piperswe wrote: post #133
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.

Was there an AM transmission station nearby? Sometimes some metal objects can act as an antenna-speaker combo when there's a high power AM transmitter nearby. (some people have even reported this happening with dental fillings!) I'm assuming this is a bell or some other low-tech thing, if not there are probably many other explanations

This gives me an idea of an attack vector. These groans and moans seem rather quiet, and the airline claims its an amplifier issue. Assuming that the amplifier is not shielded from the cabin and that its analog tech, one could theoretically induce intentional interference to play whatever you want, right?

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

#155

Post by Kye »

remarkEon wrote: post #24
phillipwei wrote: post #21

I wonder if AA has cross referenced the passenger list of each of the flights to see if there was a common passenger to all the flights.

Had the same thought. This is like “DOOM running on …” but for fart jokes, and I can’t imagine that there’s a whole gang of pranksters doing this.

The skies are full of "owo"

https://twitter.com/Lekonish/status/1455696144571326466

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

#157

Post by stickfigure »

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…

> critical software should not contain easter eggs

So boring! I look forward to my pacemaker giving me palpitations to the rhythm of "Never Gonna Give You Up".

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

#158

Post by philliphaydon »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #91
iudqnolq wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uninformed guess: "The master [public address system] power button [located] up by [seat] 1L kept getting pushed so it would shut off all the IFE [(inflight entertainment)]" This makes sense, because for safety reasons all the entertainment is paused when they use the public address system.

> for safety reasons all the entertainment is paused when they use the public address system. It's more common for the entertainment to be muted without being paused. I assume that's as a convenience to the passengers.

When I’ve been on long flights watching movies it pauses the movie. Not mute… maybe it depends on the airline.

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

#159

Post by otterdude »

jahewson wrote: post #141
bentobean wrote: post #139

Unrelated, but brings back memories… Back when I was in college some twenty years ago, we somehow managed to stumble upon a phone number we could call that would connect us directly to passengers in some unknown elevator car in some distant city. We had great fun with that for a while.

Funny on so many levels.

this guy puns

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

#160

Post by donatj »

bentobean wrote: post #139

Unrelated, but brings back memories… Back when I was in college some twenty years ago, we somehow managed to stumble upon a phone number we could call that would connect us directly to passengers in some unknown elevator car in some distant city. We had great fun with that for a while.

Back when I was in elementary school near 30 years ago we discovered we could print to any printer in the district over AppleTalk. We printed so much garbage to so many printers.
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