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Comment by prennert | Hacker News Reader

His voice is unbelievably recognizable a pilot voice. Is this something (commercial?) British pilots learn during their training?

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From the blackbird copypasta:

Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the " Houston Center voice." I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country's space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn't matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.

In case people haven't read the whole original:

https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...

It is often said that many pilots emulate Chuck Yeager's voice.[1] Yeager was a US test pilot and jet flying ace.

Tom Wolfe has a great novel about Yeager and other test pilots called "The Right Stuff."

[1] https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/silky-smooth-chuck-ye...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np272lmVRkU

The Right Stuff is non-fiction, not a novel.

Ah, I had remembered it written as a story. Presumed it took some dramatic liberties / based on a true story.

Some non-fiction books can read very much like novels, even if the term technically doesn't apply to them. These are sometimes called "non-fiction novels".

A great example is Endurance by Alfred Lansing, which tells the story of Shackleton's incredible expedition to Antarctica in 1914. It is apparently a very accurate re-telling, and a book that I highly recommend. Even though I knew the outcome of the expedition, the book was suspenseful to the very end, and surprisingly character-driven.

This reminds me of reading Maya Angelou’s _I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings_ in high school.

I asked our teacher (who also made us memorize the opening to beouwouf) how Angelou could remember some of the quotes. I recall the teacher’s response being something like, “this is what she remembers”

Looking at that book now in the context of this thread I found this:

>Reviewers often categorize Caged Bird as autobiographical fiction because Angelou uses thematic development and other techniques common to fiction, but the prevailing critical view characterizes it as an autobiography, a genre she attempts to critique, change, and expand.

Have never heard of Yeager before but after quick reading of Wikipedia ... OMG, what an amazing man and amazing life.

And he's still alive! Wow, 97 years old.

Might I ask where you are from? If anyone going to school in the US does not learn about Chuck Yeager, then I weep even worse for our education system.

I am originally from the Soviet Union but had moved to Canada very long time ago.

Also while I am totally floored by such a man maybe his place is not in a schoolbooks yet. If the US is similar to Canada school education wise I suspect that kids in US are in desperate need of basic fundamental knowledge. This should come first I believe.

This reminds me of a story that I think was about Yeager, where due to some human error on the part of a mechanic (I think in regards to fueling his plane) Yeager almost died, and after the accident he surprised everyone by asking for the same mechanic to be assigned to service his plane on his next flight. He explained his choice by saying expected that mechanic would not make the same mistake twice.

I probably butchered that story a bit.. anyone recognize it and have a link to the original?

I heard the same story but it was Bob Hoover and not Yeager.

Given how much pilots and ATCs talk among each other on the radio, I suppose it isn't all that surprising that they would develop an identifiable accent.

Calm, level inflection with no emotion. Everyone starts to sound the same.

Authoritative and soothing at the same time.

I enjoyed having Harry Kane flying the plane. Good to see he's got a fall back when his footy career ends.

I think it’s the subtle audio interference combined with the distinctive commercial pilot vocal fry.

I assume it's not so much that, and more that it's another industry with a sub-optimal diversity record.

I appreciate the downvotes, but there is a reason that most people in this job (that costs tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds to train for) sound reassuringly like a middle class man. I am not trying to make anyone feel bad for noticing the pattern, and certainly not for enjoying planes or computer games, but given that the UK government, industry groups like IATA, and several airlines all admit the issue, let's all take a deep breath.

A wide diversity of humans can and have learned to speak the pilot/ATC dialect and cadence; and, English is the generally accepted lingua franca for flight.

I am not sure how class enters the equation, although it seems to me likely that travelers would prefer to hear neither George Plimpton nor an East-End eelmonger over the intercom.

There are probably thousands of people who would be better pilots than the current average, who have no hope of ever qualifying because of either the cost, or the traditional hiring/training patterns of airlines. Maybe that doesn't bother you as a passenger, but it does seem to bother the airlines themselves, who keep introducing programs to address the issue which everyone here clearly knows better than them about.

Because all the pilots on Ethiopian Air are British middle class white people, right?

My point isn’t that planes are racist, as I suspect you know. All I’m saying is the reason most pilots on UK airlines sound the same is because they are the same. Whenever there’s an occupation where we might have a clear cut image of what those people look or sound like (lawyers, doctors, journalists) that’s some small indication that there’s probably a diversity issue at play. You can argue it doesn’t matter, and look, I even said “sub-optimal” up there, I wasn’t trying to call anyone evil. And while race and gender are issues I was also just as much thinking about working class kids’ access to these career paths because of the enormous debts they might have to run up. I share this viewpoint with such radical leftist organisations as the British Airline Pilots’ Association.

I don't know about the UK, but in the USA, many pilots come from the military.

In the USA, if you want to learn to fly for free, rather than with "enormous debts", it's simple.

All you do is go thru the US Air Force Academy. They take black, white, male, female. They will train you for "free". Yes it requires a service commitment but it's by-and-large a meritocracy.

In the USA you're not entitled to pilot training merely for the sake of "diversity". Pay your dues, earn your way.

I had a cousin who did it. He flew jets for the US Air Force for years. He then became a commercial pilot.

Geez, you seem to have a hard-on for this "more diversity!" issue.

Does it matter much for piloting? It's quite a mechanical job. I'd argue diversity matters more if you have a team of movie writers (how many movies have terrible female/minority characters because of the diversity problems?) or UX designers, but I don't think your race or gender matters much when piloting a plane...

Of course there is probably currently an excess of white male pilots, but that seems cultural and a socio-economic problem, if you fix the culture (e.g. if little girls also get asked equally as often as little boys if they'd like to be a pilot (instead of a nurse; or if the same percentage of black folks can afford pilot school as white folks), shouldn't this problem fix itself?

Personally I'd cheer on a pilot scholarship for disadvantaged groups, because it'd be nice to see them having some sort of advantage in reaching their dreams after hundreds of years of disadvantages, but I don't think having more black or female pilots would change the job, since, as I said, it's quite a mechanical job. Whereas having a woman or minority in a movie writing crew would probably make a better story due to a more diverse perspective.

These sorts of scholarships increasingly do exist, and I’m confused that you both acknowledge the problem and insult me for raising it. I also think it’s unbelievably patronising if you think the only benefit of diversity is better movie scripts. I support equal rights for mediocre scriptwriters too.

You seem keen on finding the ways people are insulting you. Those 2 examples aren't great, but I don't mean I only care about those fields.

Different voices in the boardroom? I'd say a good thing. Different voices in the cockpit? What the hell difference is that going to make, will the plane fly better due to diversity? The pilots are presumably trained to fly the planes as optimally as they can, and their gender or race shouldn't make a difference to the way they operate these machines...

Diversity is as much about opportunity as it is the economic output at the end. If the most profitable company in the world refused to hire women or black people, we’d still know that was wrong, I hope. But also in this case we almost certainly are promoting mediocre talent, who merely have access to the funds to train. Industry bodies themselves have warned of this, I’m not actually on some one man crusade about it. Believe it or not (despite spending some time writing software for airports) I don’t really care much about aviation, I just thought this was an opportunity for us all to uncover some implicit biases we might be walking round with. But alas, there is now lots of testosterone flying around and it seems unproductive.

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