161–170 of 301 posts
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.
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Presumably they would unplug the dongle at the end of the flight while they retrieve their overhead luggage
What's it jacked into, though? There are some amazingly flat card skimmers out there these days, and even cameras to place on ATMs that are disguised as panels. It could be something with a 1/8" form factor that just looks like part of the interior of the bin. For that matter, it could be a whole modified bin installed by a disgruntled employee.
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…
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/12776/how-are-t...
Jacking into that would not be inconspicuous.
These sounds are familiar to me from using “ pink trombone”, or praat, both vocal synthesizer. I would guess that a text - to - speech system is bugging out. https://dood.al/pinktrombone/
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Apparently there is a compact flash card to play music and the pre-recorded announcement over the loud speakers. I wonder if someone replaced the standard announcement with a 5 hour long file with intermittent burps and groans....
They would probably notice that but it does seem like some former passenger most likely installed something that's patched into the system. It may just be a recording from a flash drive. Or it could also be more sophisticated and patch into the wifi as well. You could also imagine it having a microphone for added hijinx but none of the interactions seem to suggest that.
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.
I was on a flight from Chicago to Raleigh a few years ago, and we were just starting to taxi out to the runway when the plane stopped and the pilot got on the PA and said something like "Sorry folks, we have a maintenance indicator (kind of like a 'check engine' light) that has come on. We have to go back to the terminal and get maintenance to check things out."
So we go back to the terminal, wait approximately 3 times longer than the expected lifetime of the universe (OK, that part might be an embellishment, but it felt like it at the time. The rest of this story is true though). Anyway, after a bit the pilot comes back on the PA and says something approximately like:
"OK folks, a $FRIZGIBBIT on this plane is broken. Thankfully these planes have two $FRIZGIBBITs and are certified to fly with just one working, so we're going to go ahead and get underway and get you all to Raleigh."
And that's just what they did. Frankly I was a bit nervous about the whole thing. I don't know what the hell a $FRIZGIBBIT is or what it does, and they say it's OK to fly with just one, but the way I figure it, somebody decided to put two in the first place for a reason. What if the remaining one breaks mid-flight??
Anyway, it all worked out in the end, or I wouldn't be here to tell this story, but the point is, planes do apparently fly on occasion with broken something-or-others.
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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…
The B-52H bomb/nav computers had a really rudimentary golf game. Think Atari 2600 quality.
The B-2A had a breakout-like game at one time.
Both were accessed via some really esoteric key presses.