Author Topic: Chicken noises at Boston Tower  (Read 17698 times)

Offline Steel_Anxiety

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Chicken noises at Boston Tower
« on: September 03, 2008, 08:48:57 PM »
Captured this tonight around 8:40 EST
In the background there was somebody making chicken noises, a pilot busts them on it.



Offline Jacko

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Re: Chicken noises at Boston Tower
« Reply #1 on: September 04, 2008, 06:58:38 AM »
I would have thought ATC would be a realy serious job. Why would someone be making chicken noises?

Offline goowe

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Re: Chicken noises at Boston Tower
« Reply #2 on: September 04, 2008, 07:07:10 AM »
Hehe, I think that's a pretty hard question to answer. I'm not a controller, but I've been in a few towers and almost all of the controllers I met were jokesters. I felt like it was their way to keep a calm environment and enjoy their job. I know that even though they joke more often than not, they're all still darn good at what they do.

Offline NY Z Pilot

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Re: Chicken noises at Boston Tower
« Reply #3 on: September 04, 2008, 11:12:36 AM »
I would have thought ATC would be a realy serious job. Why would someone be making chicken noises?

lol, the less you know the better!

xprtmarksman

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Re: Chicken noises at Boston Tower
« Reply #4 on: September 04, 2008, 11:26:03 PM »
Just because ATC is a job with a lot of responsibility doesn't mean you can't have a sense of humor.  It's how we deal with the stress.  I'm assuming the pilot made the comment just to let the controller know that they didn't get away with it, not because it disrupted the transmission.  So to answer your question; yes, ATC is a serious job, but some of us have a sense of humor as well.   

FR

Offline Steel_Anxiety

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Re: Chicken noises at Boston Tower
« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2008, 12:04:54 AM »
This post was not created to say ATC should not do stuff like this, they should. Without this stuff there would be no "Hasta la Vista" from BosJohn. I made this post because I thought it was interesting. I know the stresses of being a controller, I am planning on being one.

There are such things as long shifts as well, he must have just been doing his best to pass some time.

Offline KSYR-pjr

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Re: Chicken noises at Boston Tower
« Reply #6 on: September 05, 2008, 07:38:31 AM »
This post was not created to say ATC should not do stuff like this, they should. Without this stuff there would be no "Hasta la Vista" from BosJohn. I made this post because I thought it was interesting. I know the stresses of being a controller, I am planning on being one.

A couple years ago I was flying to a smaller class D airport in NY for the first time when the controller cleared me to land and hold short of  the crossing runway.  This was the first time I had received the land-and-hold-short clearance so I asked the controller about it.  As the controller keyed the mike to answer, I overheard another controller in the background yelling, "DON'T DO IT... GO AROUND!" in a mocking voice.  Given that the airport was relatively sleepy it seemed obvious to me the background person had overheard my query and was mocking a reply to those around him.  I thought it was funny, if not slightly humiliating.   Can't take ATC humor personally.

Of course, this "skill" for handling stress can also get controllers in trouble.  There was a clip posted to the Audio Clips forum here one or two years ago where the Canadian controller accidentally left his mike hot after calling out an instruction to a female airline transport pilot, thus blocking the reply and making him think that she didn't hear the call.  IIRC he made the same call again but his mike remained hot, blocking the reply a second time.  At this point he called the female pilot a nasty slang term and then his transmit button coincidentally released, allowing him to finally hear the female pilot's acknowledgment and a few other pilots' terse responses.


Offline amb

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Re: Chicken noises at Boston Tower
« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2008, 11:58:04 AM »
I would have thought ATC would be a realy serious job. Why would someone be making chicken noises?

It's a really high-stress job, too.  Without a sense of humor I think people would burn out or go crazy within a few weeks.

(Not to say that they're not crazy, anyway.  I've spent a fair bit of time in that tower cab, and there are some really...  unique personalities up there.  I think the busier the tower cab, the loopier the people working local.  (Although I think Mr. Chicken is a supe.))

Thanks for posting this; nice to hear some voices from home at their finest!


Offline oreotsi

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Re: Chicken noises at Boston Tower
« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2008, 11:15:41 PM »
i doubt mr. chicken is a supe... supes don't do those kind of things.

pilot221

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Re: Chicken noises at Boston Tower
« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2008, 11:55:26 PM »
i doubt mr. chicken is a supe... supes don't do those kind of things.

Yeah, they'd have to be in the tower cab to accomplish that.

Offline w0x0f

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Re: Chicken noises at Boston Tower
« Reply #10 on: December 17, 2008, 09:42:27 AM »
i doubt mr. chicken is a supe... supes don't do those kind of things.

We had a supe who would loudly imitate the sound of the phone ringing.  A pilot once asked me if we had a turkey loose in the TRACON.  I told him it was our glorified telephone answering machine. 

w0x0f