They have reports going back to June. It'll almost certainly solve the case if it's one individual.
The person doing it might not be on the affected flights. Instead they plant something on the plane during a different flight (or between flights if they are an insider who can get access to the plane between flights) that is hooked into the PA system and has a recording that it plays after a time delay or perhaps when the cabin pressure lowers or perhaps both (e.g., delay 48 hours than start when the cabin pressure…
If there is a device, they should have found it now.
Interesting. I heard similar sounds from a rather big French train station speakers recently. For me it looks like it’s just a bug from the amplification system.
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/
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…
While it is plausible that the hack compromises the entire comm system, it's unlikely. My bet is that the steward made an incorrect association between the sounds and normal system behavior. These inaccurate retellings are extremely common in ghost stories. Only time will tell, but I'm almost certain I'm right on this one.
This makes a lot of sense, but I’ll add that it’s also possible that the association was correct, but not for the assumed reason. For example, maybe the plane had a partially faulty breaker for the IFE, and there was a likelihood of tripping every time the PA system was used. (The button probably isn’t a breaker, but there’s a world of similar explanations.)
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—…
> risk
And that's what it boils down to, isn't it?
Personally I draw the line somewhere around "software that's controlling something". If software can directly screw up or cause damage in the Real World™, that's a good reason it shouldn't have easter eggs in it. If the trouble has to indirect through one or more meatbags who know better before becoming reified, well, the harm caused by any easter eggs is probably much less than the harm caused by reported bugs already closed WONTFIX with a laugh. (Note: PAX do not in fact know better, ever, as any airline employee can and will tell you.)
I could definitely be wrong but my go-to assumption when the source originates from Tiktok is to assume it's fake or staged.
In this article the author claims to have talked to American Airlines about it: >American Airlines inspected the Boeing 737-800 as well as the P.A. system itself after these reports. They tell me that maintenance “determined the sounds were caused by an issue with the PA amplifier. There was no external access to the system.” https://viewfromthewing.com/no-theres-no-ghost-in-the-machin...
> “determined the sounds were caused by an issue with the PA amplifier. There was no external access to the system.”
Hard to agree. Those sounds are almost certainly a human voice, presumably digitized. Unless the issue with the PA amp is that someone connected a sample player to it.
Interesting. I heard similar sounds from a rather big French train station speakers recently. For me it looks like it’s just a bug from the amplification system.
I feel like I'm going crazy when I read things like this. To me that is very clearly a human voice. Does it not sound that way to you?
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?
The medical intercom jack is often in the middle of the cabin (on equipped aircraft). Flight attendants can plug in an aviation headset with a very, very long cord, and the pilots patch it into one of the radios in the cockpit. This allows the flight attendants to talk to a doctor on the ground while they're physically next to a passenger's seat.
> Flight attendants can plug in an aviation headset with a very, very long cord... This allows the flight attendants to talk to a doctor on the ground while they're physically next to a passenger's seat.
"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.
I'd assume it's important to safety, but they have slightly less effective backups like yelling. I think the backup systems on aircraft are often things you'd rather not need to use.