3 ms·

It doesn’t sound particularly human and it seems like it would be a weird hobby to go on a bunch of flights and cause these strange sounds. Surely a prankster w

It doesn’t sound particularly human and it seems like it would be a weird hobby to go on a bunch of flights and cause these strange sounds. Surely a prankster would get bored and move on to something like music or silly messages. (And if the airline believed passengers were doing it they might correlate flight records or something?) I think I’d probably believe that it’s just some elctromechanical issue. I doubt fixing the PA system is going to be in the pilot’s manual and I’d expect flight attendants to be basically incompetent in dealing with such an issue. I think I would guess either an issue with some prerecorded announcements system (eg playing bits of messages at strange speeds and at random) or some kind of electrical interference or short-circuiting problem (eg some glob of solder bouncing around inside some unimportant component).

nso 4y ago
We must be listening to different tapes. Sounds very much human, very much male, very much young
- MisterSandman 4y ago
  the tonal inflections are very human, and in the recording it felt the voice changed a bit after the flight attendant made an announcement, so it's probably live (not necessarily making the sound, but using a soundboard).
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Sounds human to me too but I wonder if we've been primed by the headline to recognize it as such. If it had just been posted as "Mystery sound on American Airlines flights", maybe we would have interpreted it differently. This has worked on me before for backmasking and was quite remarkable how different what I heard between when I was primed and when I listened to the track a week later without priming.
- userbinator 4y ago
  The first burst sounds like a grazing animal. Then definitely becomes very human sounding.
- unknownaccount 4y ago
_zzaw 4y ago
There is no way this is mechanical or feedback-related. The sounds are just too varied. There's a point where the guy clearly says "raargh". It's obviously someone messing around. I assume AA claimed it's a glitch because PR doesn't want stories going around about how their planes are hackable, but it just makes them sound untrustworthy.

nso 4y ago

We must be listening to different tapes. Sounds very much human, very much male, very much young

MisterSandman 4y ago
the tonal inflections are very human, and in the recording it felt the voice changed a bit after the flight attendant made an announcement, so it's probably live (not necessarily making the sound, but using a soundboard).
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
Sounds human to me too but I wonder if we've been primed by the headline to recognize it as such. If it had just been posted as "Mystery sound on American Airlines flights", maybe we would have interpreted it differently. This has worked on me before for backmasking and was quite remarkable how different what I heard between when I was primed and when I listened to the track a week later without priming.
userbinator 4y ago
The first burst sounds like a grazing animal. Then definitely becomes very human sounding.
unknownaccount 4y ago

_zzaw 4y ago

There is no way this is mechanical or feedback-related. The sounds are just too varied. There's a point where the guy clearly says "raargh". It's obviously someone messing around. I assume AA claimed it's a glitch because PR doesn't want stories going around about how their planes are hackable, but it just makes them sound untrustworthy.