Some passengers on an ultra long haul United Airlines flight from South Africa to the United States got a little more communication from the pilots than they were expecting, as one pilot reportedly transmitted over the PA what “f**king morons” the flight attendants are. Thanks to PYOK for flagging this.
In this post:
United passengers catch pilot’s accidental hot mic rant
A Reddit user who is a very frequent flyer on United shares an incident that reportedly happened on a recent Boeing 787 flight from Cape Town (CPT) to Washington Dulles (IAD). According to the report, as the plane was starting its descent, one of the pilots made their usual pre-landing announcement, as you’d expect. But then this happened:
But once he had finished speaking, there was a 30-second pause, and then he came back on the PA, clearly thinking that he was talking over the intercom, calling to speak with the purser or another FA. “Hello? ….. Hello?” he said. You could hear ATC comms on the radio in the background. He continued trying to contact the cabin crew, and began to spout off to his colleagues in the cockpit.
“What a bunch of f**king morons! They won’t pick up the phone.”
At this point, passengers are exchanging glances with each other as if to say: “Are we all hearing this right now? What is going on?”
The captain/FO continued on to drop 2-3 more f-bombs and really lost patience as he tried to communicate with the crew, but at no point did he seem to realize he was talking with 250+ customers in the back of the plane. The cabin crew scurried awkwardly around the aircraft as they did their final safety checks, and you could see the purser trying to call up front to let them know about the open mic situation, but it seemed like no one could get through while the mic was open. I was too far back to see whether they managed to communicate with the cockpit through the door.
This went on for at least seven minutes, maybe a little more, before they went silent. Very awkward!
Whatever had happened with the PA mic actually never seemed to get fully resolved because for the remainder of the flight, the message “PA announcement in progress” remained displayed on the TV screens.
We never heard from the cockpit crew again, even after landing. The purser or gate agent did come on and say that they apologized for the problem with the PA system.
Yowzers, that’s not good, but we’ve heard worse!
Of course the irony here is that the “f**king moron” flight attendants definitely weren’t doing anything wrong, and this was either a mistake on the part of the pilots, or a glitch with the communication system.
Given that this all happened shortly after the intended announcement to the cabin, I suspect that the pilots either didn’t hang up the phone correctly to reset the connection, or some other glitch arose at that point.
While I wouldn’t say it happens all the time, it’s definitely not unheard of to see pilots transmitting the wrong information to the wrong party. Pilots communicate with air traffic control, with the flight attendants, and with passengers, and those are all separate connections.
I’ve certainly heard pilots accidentally transmit takeoff clearance over the PA system, rather than to air traffic control. And I’ve also heard them transmit information intended for the crew to passengers.
Fortunately this is usually innocent enough, since it’s just an honest mistake, and they’re not doing anything scandalous. But pilots also spend most of their time in a private space thinking that no one will hear what they say, and sometimes they really cross the line in terms of their conversations. After all, they’re only being recorded by the cockpit voice recorder, and that constantly overwrites itself.
Perhaps the worst example of inappropriate conversations in the flight deck was around 15 years ago, when a Southwest Airlines pilot was having a conversation with his colleague, but their entire chat accidentally transmitted over the air traffic control frequency.
It would be an extreme understatement to suggest that what he said was offensive, so you can listen to it below. I love how he was suspended and then received diversity education… I would’ve paid to see how that went!
Bottom line
A United Airlines pilot reportedly had a bit of a hot mic moment, when he couldn’t get in touch with flight attendants, and called them “f**king morons.” The only issue was that this was being transmitted to passengers, because he failed to actually call the flight attendants, as he intended to.
Communicating to the wrong party on planes happens with some frequency, and that’s not surprising, when you consider the complexities of the system. What’s unfortunate is when the pilots have an attitude about it, and they transmit something they really shouldn’t…
What do you make of this United pilot hot mic situation?
‘Fly the friendly skies…’ ya f***in’ morons!
Well I guess we all know now who the F*/&ing moron was