Imagine yourself on a flight, on your way to your destination, when all of a sudden, the weird sounds coming from the plane’s intercom startle you and your fellow passengers. Emerson Collins, a television actor, and producer, caught this on camera earlier this month when it was happening on a trip from Los Angeles to Dallas.
He described the sound effects in the video clip titled “The Weirdest Flight Ever” as sounding like a cross between “an orgasm and vomiting.”
The flight crew told the passengers that it was a technical error. It was assumed that the noises would stop once the flight took off. Instead, they persisted for hours: strange, incoherent grunts and moans that were broadcast over the intercom. It has gone viral and received over 1.2 million views on Twitter so far.
“This happened to me last week. It wasn’t the whole flight, but periodically weird phrases and sounds. Then a huge “oh yeah” when we landed. We thought the pilot left his mic open,” Collins tweeted.
“The weirdest flight ever. These sounds started over the intercom before takeoff and continued throughout the flight…, they couldn’t stop it, and after landing still had no idea what it was,” he added.
In the clip, he said, “Someone on this flight seems to have broken into the intercom system, and continues to make a sound that is somewhere between an orgasm and vomiting.”
A flight attendant was heard saying in the video, as the situation caused embarrassment to flight crew members, “Ladies and gentlemen, we realize there is an extremely irritating sound coming over the public announcement. The flight deck is trying to troubleshoot to try and turn it off, so please be patient with us. We know this is a very off anomaly, and none of us are enjoying it.”
The actor joked about the incident, saying in the video: “I was kind of enjoying it.”
In general, the noises are strange, uncomfortable, and difficult to explain. But as Collins described the noises as “explosive diarrhea, vomiting, and a bizarre, vaguely sexual moan” in an interview with Gizmodo, and after hearing them, this writer would add “poor impersonation of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster” to that list.
Collins asked the crew members what really happened. However, he said that the staff members said ‘they had no idea!’
But walk yourself through it: how would something like that even happen?
Flight attendants and the pilots were just as stumped as the passengers as to what was going on, according to Collins, online listeners have speculated that maybe the plane’s speaker system might have been hacked or that someone on the flight had been pranking the other passengers as the internet has also remained puzzled.
To investigate whether another passenger had somehow managed to hijack the plane’s speaker system, Collins even got up and poked around as he admitted to Gizmodo that he made an effort to investigate the situation on board, he said, “I was convinced that someone on our flight was having a great time.”
However, Collins ultimately realized that someone couldn’t be “making these sounds audibly, or the people around them would notice,” as he explained that he had “completely walked the aisles like Nancy Drew” in search of the groaner. Half-expected there to be some sort of big “climax” for the flight’s landing Collins returned to his seat but no culminating moment arrived, the noises just stopped.
However, the Los Angeles Times reports at least two other recent incidents in which flights were plagued by weird barfing noises. Meanwhile, a total of five incidents count from another website, and all of them involve LAX for some reason. Even weirder as it appears that this isn’t the first time that the moaning phantom of the skies has haunted an American Airlines flight.
As if that explains anything, American Airlines stated that the moans from the flight on September 6 were caused by a “mechanical fault” when contacted for comment by Gizmodo:
“The PA [Public Address] systems onboard our aircraft are hardwired and there is no external access. Following the initial report, 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. Our team is reviewing the additional reports.”
Gizmodo contacted Gary Kessler, a cybersecurity specialist who has previously discussed security in aviation systems, to learn whether someone might have remotely hijacked the plane’s PA system. Kessler claimed that he had sufficient knowledge about the situation to comment with certainty, but he regarded the airline’s assertion that its system was impervious to hacking to be unconvincing.
He said, “I am always suspicious when someone says, ‘The system is hardwired and can’t be breached.’ That translates to ‘At least part of the system is hardwired and we can’t think of a way right now in which it can be reached.’ Everything’s hardwired at some point, until it’s connected to something that’s not!”
The weirdest flight ever.
These sounds started over the intercom before takeoff and continued throughout the flight.
They couldn’t stop it, and after landing still had no idea what it was. pic.twitter.com/F8lJlZHJ63— Emerson Collins (@ActuallyEmerson) September 23, 2022
Sources: Gizmodo, Intheknow, Nypost
