The Captain and Tenebrous Spiels
September 24, 2022 10:16 AM   Subscribe

MeFi's Own Andy Baio is tracking a mystery over on waxy.org: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements and nobody knows how
posted by cortex (60 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
I am reminded of the tyre extinguishers.
posted by aniola at 10:26 AM on September 24, 2022 [3 favorites]


It says how at the bottom of the article?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:41 AM on September 24, 2022 [1 favorite]


It’s a theory about how, but it isn’t confirmed; “random dongle connected to somewhere it shouldn’t be” seems like a pretty discoverable thing, though.
posted by mhoye at 10:45 AM on September 24, 2022 [2 favorites]


First thing I wonder is how long it would take to check for a common passenger on the affected flights.
posted by jquinby at 10:50 AM on September 24, 2022 [7 favorites]


Yeah, it's definitely ongoing theory-crafting with no satisfying solution yet; Andy's updating on twitter (e.g. this dead-end take on the prior theory and then folding those updates into the blog post periodically.
posted by cortex at 10:51 AM on September 24, 2022 [2 favorites]


I'm going with a maintenance technician that messed around with the canned announcements and spliced in a very long silence and then all the funny sounds. An unsuspecting FA would hit "play" on the credit card announcement or whatever and never checked to see that it didn't stop.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:56 AM on September 24, 2022 [1 favorite]


"It's so obviously a human voice."

I don't know, humans hear "human voices" in audio static, distortion, etc all the time. There's a whole field of "ghost hunting" built on hearing a human voice in the distorted background noise of a tape. I don't know what's causing these noises but I think assuming right from the start that they must be made by a human hobbles the investigation.
posted by muddgirl at 11:03 AM on September 24, 2022 [13 favorites]


I think you're right that there's always a danger of apophenia/pareidolia interpretations of weird sounds biasing folks take on what they're hearing. And in the absence of an actual answer we're still in Anything's Possible territory, at least provisionally, on what the source sounds is. But based on the range of expressive qualities in the noises on Emerson Collin's first-hand video I really have a hard time interpreting it as anything other than a person making goofy noises: it's not just an ambiguous sound that has potentially-vocal qualities, it's a whole bevy of different noises showing a great deal of human vocal expressive range in timbre and tone, with nothing that sounds foreign.
posted by cortex at 11:16 AM on September 24, 2022 [7 favorites]


MetaFilter: just the groans, moans, and grunts, with some of the background noise filtered out.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:33 AM on September 24, 2022 [54 favorites]


"The most likely culprit IMHO is the medical intercom. There are jacks mounted in the overhead bins at intervals down the full length of the airplane that have both receive, transmit and key controls. All somebody would need to do is plug a homemade dongle with a Bluetooth receiver into one of those, take a trip to the lav and start making noises into a paired mic.

The fact that the captain’s announcements are overriding (ducking) it but the flight attendants aren’t is also an indication it’s coming from that system.

If this was how it was done, there’s no reason the prankster would need to hide in the bathrooms: they could trigger a soundboard or prerecorded audio track from their seat.
"

Does anyone know more about these "medical intercom jacks in the overhead bins"? What are they made of? What are they normally used for? Can anyone really just stick a dongle in there and go to town??
posted by bleep at 11:38 AM on September 24, 2022 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: Who is having a puke yank?
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 11:43 AM on September 24, 2022 [12 favorites]


It looks like aircraft PA amplifiers include signal processing to make human speech more intelligible. Could running some kind of noise (whether digital or literal noise from the engines) through a filter like this make it sound more human?

The thing for me is, it doesn't sound particularly expressive. Like, listeners can't decide if it's groaning from pleasure or from vomiting? I received a few lewd phone calls back on my college days and that was never really a distinction I struggled with.
posted by muddgirl at 11:44 AM on September 24, 2022 [4 favorites]


I found this interesting information from googling "medical intercom jacks in the overhead bins"

"The headset allows the steward to talk on the aircraft's common channel which the pilot can connect to any radio frequency. Normally the steward will be talking both the captain and possibly to the tower of the arrival airport. The tower can patch in phone lines. So, if necessary, the tower can telephone a doctor, then patch in the doctor to the frequency.

In most cases the comm link is just to make sure that arriving emergency personnel have the right information. For example, what might happen is the following:

Captain calls tower: "We have a medical emergency on board."
Tower tells captain: "Okay, emergency services are on their way." (An ambulance will greet the aircraft as soon as it lands.)
Stewardless plugs and talks to tower: "The passenger says he is diabetic. A doctor here on the plane says it looks like insulin shock."
Tower (on the line with 911): "Hello, it looks like our passenger is diabetic and going into insulin shock".
911 calls ambulance on radio: "Patient is diabetic and may be experiencing insulin shock."
This is just one scenario, but it is typical. Basically one person relays information to the next and the steward is the first link in that chain.

To answer your second question: aviation headsets have two ports: one for the earphones (listening) and the other for the microphone (speaking). The plugs are designed for ruggedness and reliability and are 1960s technology. In theory a more convenient duplex plug system could be used, but out of conservatism that has not happened yet." aviation.stack exchange
posted by bleep at 11:45 AM on September 24, 2022 [3 favorites]


MetaFilter: just stick a dongle in there and go to town
posted by chavenet at 11:46 AM on September 24, 2022 [18 favorites]


Have they checked the passenger logs for Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis?
posted by mannequito at 11:46 AM on September 24, 2022 [11 favorites]


I love the story idea of EVP appearing on a passenger plane's intercom.
posted by doctornemo at 11:53 AM on September 24, 2022 [6 favorites]


👽 Aliens. From outer space. 👽
posted by aniola at 11:55 AM on September 24, 2022 [1 favorite]


The thing for me is, it doesn't sound particularly expressive. Like, listeners can't decide if it's groaning from pleasure or from vomiting?

I see what you mean, though I mean expressive in a more literal mechanical sense: not conveying specific semantic/emotional content, just using a wide range of capabilities of the human vocal instrument and carrying a lot of the variations in specific human vocal timbre. That's what makes me deeply skeptical of the idea that it's anything but actual human (or I guess I can hedge and say mammalian) vocal noises; too many different things would have to happen in coincidence to produce that specific set of noises, and too many other things would have to coincidentally not happen to not produce significant contradictory noises in the mix.

The idea of a filtering process that biases noise toward human vocal range is interesting but I'm skeptical that anything aggressive enough to reshape non-human noises into human vocal sounds would be in play there; that strikes me as beyond filtering and well into full-on generative resynthesis etc.
posted by cortex at 11:55 AM on September 24, 2022 [3 favorites]


It's Lost with Jack
posted by clavdivs at 12:03 PM on September 24, 2022 [2 favorites]




I wonder when will be the first time that humans get pranked by an AI system.

Like if HAL 9000 and rewatching Superbad 2,000,000 times were to collide.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 12:35 PM on September 24, 2022


Has anyone checked for a creature on the wings making the sounds?
posted by TedW at 12:44 PM on September 24, 2022 [17 favorites]


I was going to make a "MetaFilter:" joke, but there are already a bunch of dongles back here....
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:52 PM on September 24, 2022 [9 favorites]


Not me. I don't record my puke yanks.
posted by dobbs at 1:03 PM on September 24, 2022 [4 favorites]


MetaFilter: I was going to make a "MetaFilter:" joke, but there are already a bunch of dongles back here....
posted by loquacious at 1:05 PM on September 24, 2022 [15 favorites]


To reinforce what bleep said, the medical communication ports don't touch the overhead PA speakers. They're just a link to the cockpit where the pilot can connect cabin personnel to the outside radio.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:05 PM on September 24, 2022 [1 favorite]


this is absolutely terrifying
posted by glonous keming at 1:20 PM on September 24, 2022 [5 favorites]


Kind of reminds me of Bob Mortimer's story about hiding a Dictaphone in his classroom as a child to play weird noises and confuse the teacher.
posted by biogeo at 1:26 PM on September 24, 2022 [5 favorites]


@JonNYC (an old friend of mine!) looked into the “medical communicator” theory and has been informed that AA doesn’t have those any more.
posted by nicwolff at 1:33 PM on September 24, 2022 [2 favorites]


The most likely explanation is ghosts.
posted by Grangousier at 1:47 PM on September 24, 2022 [10 favorites]


This absolutely invokes the infamous Chicago Max Headroom prank in my brain. Super interested to see where this goes.
posted by hijinx at 1:52 PM on September 24, 2022 [9 favorites]


there are already a bunch of dongles back here....

That's what she said...?
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:01 PM on September 24, 2022 [4 favorites]




sure it was, sarah
posted by fluttering hellfire at 2:26 PM on September 24, 2022 [18 favorites]


In case, like me, you look at the byline in the article gwint linked to, and think: “Huh, Alexandra Petri is reporting for the L. A. Times now?”

It’s a different Alexandra Petri.
posted by Kattullus at 2:30 PM on September 24, 2022 [3 favorites]


I just really need to give a shout out to this post title which is such a ridiculous pun based on obscure media from decades gone by.... It's a masterpiece.
posted by hippybear at 2:52 PM on September 24, 2022 [11 favorites]


I could believe it to be a mechanical sound based on the one near the end of the video where it suddenly goes very high. That sounds unusual and non-vocal.

I'd still put 95% chance of it being a prank.
posted by solarion at 3:34 PM on September 24, 2022 [2 favorites]


It's obviously of supernatural origin and the entire American Airlines fleet needs to be grounded until net carbon emissions reach zero.
posted by hippybear at 3:45 PM on September 24, 2022 [8 favorites]


- The sounds are noticeably louder than the crew announcements.
- The voice appears to have a broader frequency than the steward's voice.
- The recording level sounds constant, as does playback volume.
- The distortion sounds like recording levels are hot not amp. Why is it louder than the crew announcements? It doesn't sound like it's overdriving the PA. Is it going through another amp?
- In the video at 0'46, the voice says, 'huh' as if reacting to the steward's announcement.
posted by popcassady at 4:13 PM on September 24, 2022 [2 favorites]




This absolutely invokes the infamous Chicago Max Headroom prank

I am desperately hoping to make "Min Legroom" happen but it's honestly not that snappy so I don't have a lot of hope.

I just really need to give a shout out to this post title which is such a ridiculous pun based on obscure media from decades gone by.... It's a masterpiece.

This is like half my criteria for committing to a post at this point.
posted by cortex at 5:32 PM on September 24, 2022 [20 favorites]


Does anyone know more about these "medical intercom jacks in the overhead bins"?

I've never observed jacks nor sockets in the overhead bins.
posted by Rash at 6:12 PM on September 24, 2022


I think this is utterly hilarious, but I can understand how some nervous fliers might find it to be a terrifying portent of doom.

Yes, I was that asshole who felt moderate to severe turbulence and was like "Yay! Bonus roller coaster!"
posted by wierdo at 6:52 PM on September 24, 2022 [2 favorites]


Yes, I was that asshole who felt moderate to severe turbulence and was like "Yay! Bonus roller coaster!"

Oh good, I thought I was the only one who did that. I can't help but instinctively throw my hands up in the air and say "WEEEE" when I've been in heavy turbulence. If the glares I got from other passengers could kill I'd be so very dead.

Granted I'm also prone to keeping my seatbelt on at all times so I don't go splat on the ceiling and I find the fact that most people don't do that as a general practice a lot more alarming than the turbulence itself.
posted by loquacious at 7:48 PM on September 24, 2022 [7 favorites]


I'm in the "this is a cheap/very expensive roller coaster" club. I often have fleeting existential thoughts during landing about the possibility of some mishap leading to a sudden unplanned end of my life, but when we're midair and the plane just suddenly free-falls for a second because of a local pressure differential I'm like YES FINALLY A VERY BRIEF VISIT TO SPACE CAMP and then feel belatedly empathetic about the people around me freaking out.
posted by cortex at 8:34 PM on September 24, 2022 [10 favorites]


“Our maintenance team thoroughly inspected the aircraft and the PA system and determined the sounds were caused by a mechanical issue with the PA amplifier, which raises the volume of the PA system when the engines are running,” said Sarah Jantz, a spokesperson for American.

Based on this and the prank theory of a recording with a valid announcement followed by a long silence and then grunts...

My theory is that the above explanation is actually correct and the whole thing is an accident, not a prank. My scenario:

1. Someone in a studio somewhere is tasked with recording a flight announcement.

2. They make the recording, but the RECORD light stays on afterward.

3. Someone horses around with the microphone or maybe makes noises on purpose to test equipment. Or maybe has a medical issue or enjoys a recreational drug or some private intimate activity. The resulting noise ends up in the recording.

4. They forget to crop the recording and they end up with an MP3 that is an hour long instead of 20 seconds. It compresses well so nobody notices.

5. The airline(s) play this recording for years and nobody notices because the groans are quieter than the rest of the recording.

6. Someone updates the PA amplifiers that are supposed to increase in volume when the engines make noise, and now they increase the volume EXTREMELY sometimes.

7. Now the groans are audible...

Still the whole thing leaves me with even less confidence in flight security. If this WAS an actual exploit, it could be a prelude to something actually dangerous. (Imagine an announcement saying "There is a bomb between rows 3 and 4" or "The man in the 6th row window seat is a terrorist" or similar panicking passengers.)

I don't think that's the case, but they should REALLY be making sure...
posted by mmoncur at 9:26 PM on September 24, 2022 [8 favorites]


The one phobia that has stayed with me since childhood is of disembodied, repetitive voices (remember in the 80s when the TV station logo would come up and you'd hear "We are having technical difficulties. Please stand by." repeated for SEVERAL minutes at a time until broadcast resumed? Absolutely shattering to 5 year-old me), and I'm starting to panic just a little reading about this. God only knows what kind of state I'd be in if I was already on that flight with COVID anxiety.
posted by Dokterrock at 11:44 PM on September 24, 2022 [8 favorites]


First thing I wonder is how long it would take to check for a common passenger on the affected flights.

Or commonality of crew. I wouldn't put it past being some bored dickhole of a (co)pilot having a laugh at their passengers expense.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 12:36 AM on September 25, 2022


Not me. I don't record my puke yanks.

then what do you puke yank to next time?
posted by taquito sunrise at 1:00 AM on September 25, 2022 [7 favorites]


3. Someone horses around with the microphone or maybe makes noises on purpose to test equipment. Or maybe has a medical issue or enjoys a recreational drug or some private intimate activity. The resulting noise ends up in the recording.

4. They forget to crop the recording and they end up with an MP3 that is an hour long instead of 20 seconds. It compresses well so nobody notices.

I think this is the most plausible explanation. It's easy not to notice an errant clip an hour or so down the timeline.
posted by popcassady at 3:54 AM on September 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


The voice pre-existing on a recording would also explain why it occurs on different models within the same airline.
posted by popcassady at 4:05 AM on September 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Clearly, someone had their phone or laptop on during those crucial and arbitrary moments when the plane's systems are particularly vulnerable, and now we've got this.
posted by xedrik at 7:42 AM on September 25, 2022 [7 favorites]


Maybe it’s just some group of flight attendants or pilots pulling a prank. Like let’s see if we can fuck with the passengers by sneaking something silly on the PA system.
posted by interogative mood at 8:27 AM on September 25, 2022


Once they figure out what it is American Airlines will probably charge each passenger a $30 extra fee to turn off the sounds.
posted by Liquidwolf at 9:20 AM on September 25, 2022 [14 favorites]


I miss old-school Reply All so much right now.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 10:42 AM on September 25, 2022 [4 favorites]




“I'm in the ‘this is a cheap/very expensive roller coaster’ club.”

In the mid-90s, I was on a flight that was diverted to an emergency landing at a nearby airport because a bomb threat had been called-in.

I figured that it was very unlikely that there actually was a bomb, but of course it was possible. I reasoned that if it actually existed, it might have a delayed timer or altitude trigger, so it was about when we reached cruising altitude that I felt a tiny bit of anxiety.

Mostly, though, I found it a very interesting and novel experience. I thought I was probably not truly in danger but, if there was a bomb, it certainly would be a notable and exciting way to die!

When they were rushing us off the plane and herding us away to a safe distance, I noticed other passengers weeping and being quite upset and it occurred to me that I might be a little odd.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 3:59 PM on September 25, 2022 [10 favorites]


Laurie Anderson - New Jersey Turnpike
posted by flabdablet at 12:56 AM on September 26, 2022


This sounds a lot like Mouth Play, a fun(ny) Ableton Live plugin that emulates the vocal chords.

Goofing around with an artificial vocal chord sounds pretty much just like that.

For that reason, I'd buy the theory that this is the effect of a voice isolator, plus some bursts of sound from a live mic that sometimes sound vocal.

If that sound travels through a tube, you get that a/o sound you hear in the video.
posted by svenni at 4:11 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]


svenni: For that reason, I'd buy the theory that this is the effect of a voice isolator, plus some bursts of sound from a live mic that sometimes sound vocal.

mmoncur: Someone horses around with the microphone or maybe makes noises on purpose to test equipment. Or maybe has a medical issue or enjoys a recreational drug or some private intimate activity. The resulting noise ends up in the recording.

Synthesis of theories: This is a artifact of the recording engineer trying out their fun new voice isolator with a variety of unusual vocal sounds to see if it runs into problems.
posted by solarion at 4:31 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


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