This Is Your Captain Speaking

Pushkin A few weeks ago, when the leaves had just started to turn up here in Hudson. One of our revisionist history producers, Ben Nedaf Haffrey, came by the offices of Pushkin North in the grand tradition of revisionist history. He'd recently been flying around the country working on a story when an unexpected encounter got him thinking about something entirely different.

I had a really unlucky day of travel. A couple weeks ago, I was in San Francisco and I was trying to get to Los Angeles. But I had to rebook my flight because of an urgent work meeting that got moved. And when I got to the airport, I realized I'd rebooked it two weeks after I was trying to fly and I was trying to save money. I got the cheapest ticket possible so I could not change the flight, and so I just had to rebook on the cheapest flight I could find. Which was a Southwest flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles via Las Vegas. Which makes no sense, absolutely no sense. So then I got on the air train going the wrong way. I wound up in this like median strip of the highway that was coming from a wedding and my suit bag broke, my suit was flying all over the place. And just a bad luck day.

Welcome to Revisionist history, my show about things overlooked and misunderstood. Today's episode is a conversation with Ben Nadaf-hafri. Digging into whether and why all pilots sound the same, and what that might tell us about aviation and human nature.

All right, so I'm on this unnecessary flight from Vegas to Los Angeles, and I'm sitting next to an off-duty pilot who I later learned was named Rob.

Wait, how do you know he's a pilot?

So, you know, he's a pilot because he's got, like the Epaulettes on his shoulder, the stripes short-sleeved button-down shirt and also a lanyard. That said, like, Pilots association or something like that.

Dead giveaway?

Yeah, you could tell immediately. So I see my golden opportunity and I ask, Rob, about pilot voice. Do you have a sense that all people think pilots have the same voice?

I definitely have a sense that there's the idea that we kind of make certain noises on the intercom.

Jackpot?

100, I mean, it's the analogy is to, you know, in medicine, it's bedside manner, and what is bedside manner? A lot of bedside manner is just the way in which the doctor addresses you.

But there's not. I don't feel like there is a doctor's voice in the same way as there is a pilot's voice.

No, no.

Like, I think there's a cultural understanding of what a pilot sounds like, that doesn't exist for hardly any other social role. I mean, so I was thinking about this. You have all these pilots in the media like Quagmire on Family guy. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.

Giggity.

Or Matt Damon on 30 Rock? Well, folks. From the flight deck, it looks like it's going to be about another half hour and then we'll be on our way.

Uh.

Yeah, so the Uh sound is a universal component of pilot voice.

Yeah, universal, and I mean, this is the thing I talked about with Rob, like he does, uh's all the time, okay, so where does that come from?

Uh, I think there's some truth to it. I mean, obviously it's not completely true. But you know, we're up there, we're multitasking and we get a little busy and we're trying to make an announcement. And, uh, you know, sometimes you don't really think about completely what you're going to say. You know the basics, but your brain's still putting it together, you know, so it's just human nature, you know, your brain's taking a pause.

And in fact, he even copped to the fact that sometimes he does an extra long uh, like he will actually draw out an uh.

All right, I have a couple of times, not often, but I have kind of drawn that out on purpose. Whatever you would call that sound, uh, just for fun, you know? But like you said earlier, I have no idea if anybody in the back laughed or even picked up what I was throwing down.

You think you've like actually done an extra long, uh, just in case.

Not ridiculously long, but just enough to, yeah.

What's like an average length?

That was long, that was long.

But you have to do it a little bit of a lower tone than that, though, you know, well, I just want, like, it's got to have that lower, lower tone.

Oh my God, Rob is Godsent.

Rob is I had such a bad day and then I sat next to Rob and I was like, I am. I am being blessed right now and I got off the plane and I swear to God. When I was at the baggage claim, I walked by these two people who were talking in L.A. And one of them was saying to the other person. Like, Well, you know, the ancient notion of the wheel of fortune, right? And the other guy was like, No, what's that? and he was like, Well, it's like fortunes, a wheel.

Like, is there a pilot's voice? Yes.

Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts. I apologize for the rough air, but we should be through it here in about 10 minutes or so.

And then you got to drag them out.

Like, Oh, we should be doing about 10 minutes or so. oh, the time is seven o'clock.

Oh.

She was right. It's like robotic. Typically, they sound the same.

I don't know how or why.

Is it just they've heard other pilots do it and they feel this is how I've got to talk?

What I'm wondering is like, do all pilots sound the same? Yes, they do, they do.

They always say, Folks, folks, yes.

I think in general, yes. They have like the same type of tone and they're all like, pretty polished, like whenever they come on, like on, like on the plane, like the intercom or whatever.

They all sound the same. What does a pilot sound like?

Like a robot.

Do you think all pilots sound the same?

Yes, except for the Black ones.

Except for the black ones. Interesting, what do they sound like?

Black and the rest sound like.

Yo people.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. You know about what Tom Wolfe says about this and the right stuff? It's Jaeger, it's all Chuck Jaeger, yeah.

The pilot Captain Chuck Jaeger.

Chuck Jaeger, the famous test pilot from West Virginia who in 1947 breaks the sound barrier. The X-1 was mine because I was trained in maintenance and I understood systems.

And obviously could fly an airplane.

So, yeah, Tom Wolfe writes the right stuff, 1979.

And in the right stuff, there's that moment where Jaeger played by Sam Shepard.

I'll drink to that.

Okay, here goes. Anyone who travels very much on airlines in the United States soon gets to know the voice of the airline pilot. Coming over the intercom. With a particular drawl, a particular folksiness, a particular down-home calmness that is so exaggerated, it begins to parody itself. The voice that tells you as the airliner is caught in thunderheads and goes bolting up and down a thousand feet at a single gulp. To check your seatbelts because it might get a little choppy. Who doesn't know that voice and who can forget it even after he has proved right? And the emergency is over?

Yeah, and I like that. He's just, you know, he was not in airports. Asking everybody if they agreed that all pilots sounded this way, he was just like, Yeah, I got it. But I don't actually think that's a sufficient explanation for what Pilot Voice is, but I think it's a good explanation. Partially because, like, when was the last time you listened to Chuck yeager?

I don't think I ever have, I ain't no Sam Shepard.

It's not the pilot voice.

I'm as interested in a word choice, so folks is clearly huge.

There's a I have. Someone at LAX also pointed this out specifically.

What are other vocabulary choices that are central to pilot voice?

Well, I think the euphemisms are huge, so the near miss bumpy air, choppy air.

Diminutives, a little bit of turbulent, it got a little bit of.

Yeah.

It's not lackadaisical, but it is. They do want to signal that these problems are so trivial that they can barely muster, you know, normal levels of enthusiasm to. It's just everything's just kind of I've seen it all before, kind of. There's a can I do a little thing about the evolutionary basis for pilot voice? Yeah.

It's also probably like, I bet, your vocal cords tighten and then you become less resonant.

Also, I would suspect, and so we're conditioned evolutionarily to interpret somebody with a kind of high, fast speech cadence as being terrified. So the pilot necessarily has to be the person who speaks slowly and low if he's trying to communicate calm.

You think people are, you're. You think people are making hires based in part on whether or not you have the right pilot voice.

A hundred percent. We already know that in every other job, some aspect of physical presentation matters hugely in who gets hired or not. Right? So when it? When it comes to hiring pilots, you would be, if you're the hiring person, even unconsciously, powerfully disposed to hire someone who who conformed to pilot stereotype. I mean, look at the way that there was a whole separate set of things for years that governed what a stewardess was supposed to be.

Well, like a lot of the pilot voice thing, the first thing people say is it's just the speakers, and then the second thing people say is it's because they're all white guys.

Yeah, the most hierarchical institutions in our society are still all dominated by white guys, particularly tall, tall, middle-aged white guys. That's what C.E.Os are, that's what pilots are, that's what neurosurgeons are.

The same stereotyping and bias is applied in piloting, and it is statistically true, like, like, about 95 of pilots are white and about 95 of pilots are male. At least as of 2022, numbers that is changing. But historically, it has always been a very white male profession, and it continues to be so. But, like, not every white guy sounds the same.

I certainly don't know what his voice sounded like. I can't, I can't think of it.

So something's up, it's not just Chuck Jaeger. What I'm interested in is what does that voice represent, and how did it happen that they all sound alike?

We'll be right back.

Yeah, yeah, please.

So I was thinking about this as you were talking. Which is, there's a whole literature on contrition in in the cases of accused criminals, so you're in court, you're making your statement, or you're talking and jury's listening. One of the things that juries weigh the heaviest is whether or not they feel like the accused is displaying contrition. Right? They have an expectation, an expectation about a certain mode of self-presentation. Now, no one really knows what contrition looks like.

Well, so there are these clear ingredients in the pilot voice, as it's used by pilots and expected by passengers. You got the the drawn out eyes, the slow pace, maybe a bit of southern drawl. But I want to get into the mechanisms by which a whole profession could converge on a specific voice. So I talked to this speech psychologist, Jennifer S. Pardo, who's the director of the Speech Communication Laboratory at Montclair State University. You know, called her up, said, I want to talk to you about pilot voice. Ever hear of it?

I actually asked my husband about it yesterday. He used to actually do flight training for a while, just, you know, as a hobby. And he said, Oh yeah, there's definitely, definitely pilot voice, and he's like, Oh yeah, it's totally from Chuck yeager. Yeah, he definitely felt like he there was, I wouldn't say pressure, but he definitely felt the need to get into this mode of speaking. When he was in flight training. To, you know, show that he was part of the group here.

So Jen specifically works on something called phonetic convergence and also communication accommodation theory, which is is basically it's this. It's a theoretical frame for a thing that most of us experience. Like, you go to London as an American, you're there for two weeks, and by the end of the two weeks you start. Maybe there's some British mannerisms work their way into your speech. Communication. Accommodation is the the study of the way what? The mechanism of that is how you sort of modify your way of speaking to belong to an in-group or to distinguish yourself from an out-group. And for pilots, it's something that could be happening basically unwittingly, because of how much else they're doing in the cockpit.

So research in phonetic convergence is trying to really pinpoint some of these internal cognitive mechanisms and how they, how they play around with each other. And and this idea of cognitive load and multitasking, right? If it's an automatic process, it's something that would be harder to suppress when you're multitasking.

Jen studies this, so she actually looked at like roommates who live together in college and do their do. Does the way they speak converge over the course of a semester, which often it does? But, she said, an interesting thing, which is. We tend to think of communication as a one way thing, like broadcasting functionally, but it is it is a two way thing. So half of it is how you're communicating.

Like, if you really were to look at it, like, really, really look at it, like, take, you know, take a recording, compare the recording right to other recordings, put it in a scientific setting and in a scientific experiment. You'd probably find more differences than similarities, but the similarities matter maybe more, right? So there is this other thing going on where socially or psychologically, because we believe it to be true, we look for evidence that it's true every time we hear it. And if we don't get the evidence from one aspect of the way the person is talking, we might see it in another aspect of the way that the person is talking. Right? If it's not there in the vocabulary, it might be there in something about the sentence structure, or it might just be that they all went, uh, right.

I do think that is a crucial element to the pilot voice thing. Of course, it's not true that all pilots have exactly the same voice. But insofar as the majority of people, I've spoken to, most people you come across on the street. If you ask them this question, what does a pilot sound like? have the same voice in their mind? Some of that is just projection, and I think it's projection from a place of needing security. Having the question in the back of your mind, of your pilot, that Tom Wolfe question, Do they have the right stuff?

Yeah.

And and so there is that kind of, that's, that's, that's part of this projection thing you're referring to as well, like the expectation thing, but it's it's interesting because you do you. You see and interact with flight attendants, but you typically do not see the pilot until the plane has safely landed. So the only point of contact you have with your pilot up till then is the voice, which they're also aware of. And also it's this, it's this crazy situation of. They are speaking to several hundred people, all of whom have some kind of background anxiety about flying, which is, you know, in my opinion, just a completely unnatural thing to do.

Pilot name.

So, you want to share your last name?

My last name is Stahl, and even though there's an H in it, it sounds the exact same, so people will hear. So I never say this is Captain Stahl, I always say this is the captain speaking, but I always break that up. Just so that if there is someone back there who's feeling, you know, nervous about flying, they're going to be like, OK, that's a sign I got to get out of here.

Captain Stahl Yeah, that's, that's really unfortunate.

I think it's hilarious.

Captain Stahl, airline pilot, also an expert on why people are terrified of flying. Something she can empathize with because she herself really dislikes public speaking. Can I ask, when you were starting, did you feel when you made your first pas? OK? I know what a pilot is supposed to sound like, and how do I do my version of the voice, or what? How conscious were you of this thing?

Oh, I was terrified because I would imagine everybody's listening, tuned in and going, Oh my gosh, who is that? And her voice doesn't sound like what I'm expecting up there. And and also not even just that. I just wasn't comfortable with a microphone in my hand. So I guarantee you, my voice was not reassuring when I was making my first pas because I was too nervous.

You know, she has a great voice, doesn't she?

She does have a great voice.

She's funny, too, though. What I wonder is what, like, do we do? We like the fact that she seems to have a little bit of a sense of humor. I think we do.

Yeah, I feel like there is a certain kind of humor that's not trying to make you laugh, but it shows that the person finds the situation amusing. It's like more a reflection of the fact they're kind of bemused by everything than that they're, you know, trying to be a comedian or something. You just, you want somebody, you want somebody who's got, like, a pretty upbeat view of the world and is unharried.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, she, she has that, that is that kind of one eye, one eyebrow slightly raised.

Yeah, like she gets what's funny about her name, for instance, but where it leads me is. It does seem like there is an awareness in pilots that you have to communicate competence, sound like a pilot. Because you're answerable to the people on the back who don't have any other way of telling if you're doing a good job. Like, they don't know at all what it means to fly the plane, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And then in terms of conveying to two people, one thing that I have found. It's very helpful for people to hear your voice when there is turbulence, because people just want to hear your voice. And then they can go like, Oh, oh, good. So for me, it's just trying to be natural and comfortable and making peers that are reassuring to people, that's that's the goal. Is going to be more what the message is and the tone of voice, so that it's not something that's going to make somebody fearful. Just in the fact that if my voice sounded fear inducing in some way.

But then the question I had after Genpardo and Captain Stahl is how are all these pilots arriving at? Essentially the same answer for how to convey these basic assurances with their voice? And I talked to a pilot who said that everything in flying is either technique or procedure, that most of flying is procedure. Including. You know, when you're descending, you you call out the altitude at certain points, or when you put the gear down, you say gear down. It's like you say a specific thing at a certain moment, that's procedure, technique is things like we have to lose altitude.

So why is Tom Cruise allowed to break all the pilot rules?

Why is Maverick allowed?

In general, though, Tom Cruise, even in Mission Impossible, you know, he instead of playing the kind of cool, calm, unflappable, he's always sprinting madly from one thing to the next. And like. But it's a persona that he he brings to one movie after another, including his pilot roles. Where he gets to deviate from what we normally. He's a he's a hero who gets to. he's essentially a jackass in these movies.

Well, Tom Cruise plays Tom Cruise. I mean, like, that's the part of it is like, you just know it's him in every role, and there is this kind of, I remember, there's.

Well, he's, but this, this does tell you what we're talking about, because his part, a key part of his persona, is visible effort.

Yes.

Right, whereas what we want, pilot voice is about invisible effort.

No, yes.

The pilot never lets on that he is, he never says, Folks, you know, we got to, we got an intense next 10 minutes. I'm not going to talk to you because I'm gonna be so overwhelmed with what I'm doing, but we're going to.

I think that's true, and also I think this is part of what's going on with the Yeah. The one explanation for it is they get all the information that they're reading out to the passengers, all the unnecessary information nobody cares about. Like, Oh, that's like too many knots. I wish there were fewer knots and wind in New York City.

I assume the was just a deliberate affectation to suggest that they're in no hurry.

I think that's what it is, but it also fills space when they are doing something else. Yeah, so it's, it's, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I've got a few more questions, but let's take a short break then and then we'll be right back.

I do, there's, there's one other thing that that's interesting to me. Are you familiar with the sterile cockpit rule?

Keep going.

This is a regulation that came about after a famous crash in 1974.

Oh, wow.

And when the regulators reviewed the flight records, listen to the black box. One of the things they concluded is that they were. The crew was distracted by conversation and specifically by small talk. I think the line is something like on everything from used cars to politics.

Yeah, and made even more pronounced by the fact that post 9-11 now, the pilot's not allowed to leave the cockpit.

That's really interesting. I mean, that would suggest that there's more pressure, theoretically, there would be an increase in pilot voice.

Yeah.

In the last 20 years.

Or at least it would explain persistence of pilot voice.

Right, even as it becomes a more diverse profession.

It persists because that's all it got.

Yeah, I mean, I wonder if I mean it's, it's. It's a crazy time to be flying right now, though, like the past summer, was one of like, a historically bad time to fly. There's all this nutty, nutty weather, there's all these delays. There was the New York Times investigation that showed near misses are happening way more often than anyone thinks.

No, no, I never have.

It's not him communicating to his passengers, but it is him communicating from the flight deck. Um, this was the famous emergency landing in 2009, when captain Sully Sullenberger landed his Airbus A320 in the Hudson River after some birds got caught in the engines. And to me, it illustrates the ideal that I think the pilot voice is in its essence, conveying. Not a chuck yeager impression or some classic male stereotype, but a human ideal. About our ability to solve even the hardest problems under the greatest stress.

Uh, this is a cactus. 1539 hit birds. I'm hoping it's returning back towards LaGuardia.

Okay, uh, you need to return to L.a.Guardia. Turn left heading of a two two zero.

Two, two, zero.

Tower, Stop your departure. He's got emergency returning. Who is this 1529.?

Got it?

Cactus 1529.

We're unable, we may end up in the Hudson.

Hi Cactus 1549.

That the unable fantastic is that is like, that is, I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do.

Okay, yeah, off your right side is Teterboro Airport. Do you want to try to go to Teterboro? Yes.

Teterboro Uh, Empire.

Actually, LaGuardia departs emergency inbound. There you go, Cactus 1529 over the George Washington Bridge wants to go to the airport right now.

Wants to go to the airport.

Check Does he need assistance? Uh, Yes, he. uh, it was a bird strike. Can I get him in for a runway one?

We can't do it.

Okay, which runway would you like at Teterboro?

We're going to be in the Hudson.

I'm sorry, say again, cactus.

We're going to be in the Hudson.

He's so awesome.

It is incredible, unable.

The Unable The Unable is my favorite Unable.

And, uh, just in case any listeners aren't familiar, uh, the end of all this is that Sully lands his plane in the Hudson with no fatalities. So it's an incredible artifact and it, I think it, it takes us back to where we started today. Uh, you might get unlucky, misbook your flight, rip your suit bag, lose your money in Vegas, get a bird in your plane engines. But if all else fails, in this crazy overtax system we're stuck with right now, you could still get lucky with the right person flying the plane, no matter what their voice sounds like.

The one thing I couldn't stop thinking about Ben throughout this whole episode is whether you have a good pilot's voice.

Well, yeah, someone in the airport said. She thought that, Yeah. I asked her, What does a pilot sound like? She was like, You sound like a pilot? Um, and I, Uh, I, I really don't think that I do, but do you do you think you have a good pilot's voice?

Do I think I do um, I do too much? um, uh, too many volume shifts.

Yeah.

So it's not. I need my hands as well to communicate properly. There's all kinds of reasons I think I would fail as a as a pilot, those being the principal ones.

Yeah, I think I would chiefly fail at flying a plane.

I, my one I. I flew a plane only once, and my, you know, in the presence of an experienced co-pilot, and my co-pilot was a. Was. A rabbi who flies on the side. And I have to say the only thing more reassuring than a kind of chuck yeager person next to you is a rabbi. Because he comes from a tradition of intellectual rigor. And you feel like if there is something to something obscure that he would need to know about the plane, you feel like he would know that.

This is like the Talmudic theory of flying. It's, it's, uh, it's, you know, the technique, procedure thing again.

He's Rashi, said this about, you know, flying in bad conditions, and he knows that.

That's amazing, all right. Well, thanks for those welcome.

All right, Ben.

Oh, um, I have one last bit of rob to, uh, play us out any, uh, any, any pilot voice sign-offs.

Well, uh, folks, I'd like to thank you for flying with, uh, what was it? authentic history? revisionist history? ah, revisionist history? Uh, we'll, uh, see you next time.

Yes, thanks so much.

Folks.