NTSB removes UPS Flight 2976 Spectrogram
Posted by Yosh145@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 254 comments
Direct Quote from website:
“The NTSB is aware that advances in image recognition and computational methods have enabled individuals to reconstruct approximations of cockpit voice recorder audio from sound spectrum imagery released as part of NTSB investigations, including the ongoing investigation of the crash last year of UPS flight 2976 in Louisville, Kentucky.
The NTSB does not release cockpit audio recordings. Federal law prohibits such public release due to the highly sensitive nature of verbal communications inside the cockpit. The NTSB takes these privacy restrictions seriously.
The NTSB docket system is temporarily unavailable as we examine the scope of the issue and evaluate solutions. We hope to restore access to the docket system as soon as possible.”
Link: https://www.ntsb.gov/pages/dockets-unavailable.aspx
Could be because people were reconstructing the audio from the spectrogram.
Rare-Day-9612@reddit
is there a transcript available? what were the last words?
flying_wrenches@reddit
That footage falls under our no NSFW rules,
And I am also bound by my own ethics to remove it. That is unacceptable to do.
Good men died.
We will not allow that on this sub.
Any reposts are subject to whatever punishment deemed fitting.
Shoddy-Fuel-739@reddit
way to save the world, save. good for you.
UnitedStranger4063@reddit
Fine. Where can we find it instead of here?
JohnnieAnonnie@reddit
CVRs should be made public. Clutch those pearls tighter, Nancy.
wehooper4@reddit
There is an active lawsuit against the estate of one of the pilots. This helps show how the premises of the lawsuit is bullshit, so it being public actually helps the family of the POC of that flight.
I get why these are not normally released, but this being public helps shape the narrative against the lawsuit and prevents more of the now deceased captain’s assets being funnel into paying lawyers vs his descendants.
Blue_Etalon@reddit
I suggest you lock the post then.
FatSteveWasted9@reddit
Got some big feelings on by the subject eh?
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MacGibber@reddit
It was an honest mistake by the NTSB and they corrected it ASAP and have a new process for future investigations.
It’s being fixed and let’s move on to continued safe flying.
Blue_Etalon@reddit
This is not cutting edge technology. I’m not giving the NTSB “it was an honest mistake” credit on this one
gscalise@reddit
Oh, come on... One thing is to "redact" PDFs by adding black boxes without removing the text, so you can still copy+paste the redacted text. On the other hand, the technique in this case is quite clever, and while it makes total sense once you know how it was done, in reality you can only pull it off if you have good knowledge of image, signal and speech processing.
I don't think anyone in NTSB would have ever imagined that people would reconstruct the CVR audio from the spectrogram, so yeah, they deserve even more credit than that, especially if they vouch not to let it happen again.
Blue_Etalon@reddit
I’m finding examples of people doing this back in 2013. If you know what Matlab is, it looks like there is a macro to do it. Spectrographs are a key forensic element in NTSB investigations and you’re saying it’s reasonable to assume they could never have imagined? Really?
gscalise@reddit
I do know very well what Matlab is, and no, the technique requires more than some macro, since you have to reconstruct the phase data that is lost.
I think you're clutching your pearls a bit too hard on this one.
Blue_Etalon@reddit
You’re talking as if this recording never existed. It did. I think I know what you’re clutching.
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Yosh145@reddit (OP)
I’m just relaying that the NTSB removed the spectrograph, and people should stop looking for it
floo82@reddit
Anything on the internet is on the internet forever, and nobody has any authority to tell other people to stop looking for it. The knee-jerk reaction of condemnation and censorship to once the cat is out of the bag is stupid.
The NTSB will not make the mistake again, and that's all that needs to be said. It's wildly available anywhere else for anyone who wants to see it, despite the dramatic reaction on this sub.
M1K3Z0R@reddit
100% agree. Streisand effect in full swing actually, I was unaware of this until I read it here, wondered what was in there that was too sensitive for the mods, went and found it... and was disappointed. Lots of drama and karma farming over nothing IMHO.
perplexedtortoise@reddit
It's all over the internet already, NTSB let the cat out of the bag.
TalbotFarwell@reddit
Information wants to be free.
gscalise@reddit
They restricted access to the whole docket site. I'm sure they'll be clearing up spectrograms from any previous reports too.
GrapefruitMuch2818@reddit
Punish a fat babies balls beta boy
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hawkeye000021@reddit
What workplace would flag this as unsuitable? Other than the NTSB maybe?
Hot_Net_4845@reddit
While we typically take "NSFW" literally, we do occasionally make exceptions for people dying, especially depending on the circumstances and what the footage is like
liquidoxygentextures@reddit
"Could be because people were reconstructing the audio from the spectrogram."
There was a post in this subreddit earlier today doing exactly that. How good the reconstruction was I can't say as I didn't open the post.
bozza8@reddit
It was an excellent reconstruction, I assumed it was an official release.
It was perfectly possible to identify each pilots voice as distinct and also the emotional changes in their voice. I would have assumed it was a .mp3
NoSelf5869@reddit
Lol simply because you can identify the voices and such doesn't mean its excellent=accurate reconstruction.
For all you know, the actual voices could be completely different and AI came up with random credible sounding stuff
Techhead7890@reddit
No. It's not the LLM filling in the blanks or synthesising the audio by generative diffusion.
The LLM was used to find a waveform transform algorithm and implement it quickly, the code of which is relatively widely available.
In other words, AI wasn't used as the lockpick, it was used to lookup and 3d print a known one.
MateoVanDamme@reddit
It has nothing to do with AI, reconstructing audio form a spectogram has been possible since the seventies. People just used AI to create a script that calls these already available tools.
thesandman00@reddit
On today's episode of "disagree just because"
NoSelf5869@reddit
Huh? What do you mean?
mck1117@reddit
Funny enough, doing that reconstruction from a spectrogram is not dissimilar to how the mp3 audio format works.
cheetuzz@reddit
wow, it’s possible to reconstruct speech from a spectrogram? Any links to any demos of that?
QuirkyDefinition3214@reddit
I worked in a military organization in the 1990s. The organization was able to reconstruct speech and conversations this way in what I would’ve described back then as science fiction type stuff. Without the fiction.
no_idea_bout_that@reddit
AI based text to speech uses a spectrogram as a step in the process. That's the part that gives the tone and timbre of the selected voice model.
Text -> Tokens/phrasing -> Spectrogram -> Audio
https://getstream.io/blog/text-to-speech/
VibeySwingTrader@reddit
Yes… I’m an audio engineer. This is routine.
They must have audio engineers on staff. This should never have happened.
WWYDWYOWAPL@reddit
I do data science for environmental monitoring - we regularly use computer vision models to identify bird species based on spectrograms of their calls.
Spectrograms are just a visual representation of audio so it is very easy to recreate audio from a spectrogram.
Vxsote1@reddit
A spectrogram is just a graphic representation of the output of an FFT. And FFTs are invertable.
It's a little more complicated than that, but not by much.
Icy-Ninja-622@reddit
An FFT is reversible, but a spectrogram loses information. An FFT gives you both amplitude and phase of the various frequencies, and a spectrogram almost always only shows amplitude. So, if you try to reverse a spectrogram, you've lost the phase information. This will distort the resulting audio.
Vxsote1@reddit
This is correct. It's one of the complications I was referring to. But obviously it's still possible to get intelligible audio without the phase info.
cheetuzz@reddit
It would have to be a video of an FFT right? Not just a single screenshot?
I’m still wondering why the NTSB would publish an FFT of the audio anyways?
Vxsote1@reddit
Yeah, you answered with your edit. Amplitude in a spectrogram is typically indicated by the color or intensity of a given pixel. You were possibly thinking of a real time spectrum display, which sometimes has a "waterfall" spectrogram under it.
An FFT could be used to help identify (or perhaps rule out) certain sounds without having to actually listen to the audio, but I have no way to know if that was what the NTSB had in mind.
roehnin@reddit
It seems to have been for identifying cockpit noise and alarms and alerts. They also released spectrograms from a test aircraft or simulator playing various alarms and alerts.
K20017@reddit
Sure. here's a great example of it from Benn Jordan. He takes a high speed camera to a speaker and records the motion. The image is analyzed and reconstructed back into an audio file, same basic process as was done on the CVR frequency analysis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEC6PM97IRI&t=12m57s. 12m57s time stamp if the link doesn't work.
He also has a really cool video on how he stored a PNG image on the audio playback of a singing Starling bird. Really cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEC6PM97IRI
Blue_Etalon@reddit
No, I won’t post that. The mods made it clear they don’t want that in here.
Brillica@reddit
They didn’t ask for the CVR, just a sample of a spectrograph being converted into audio. I’ve no idea what it would sound like, so it would be interesting to hear a sound created from an image (I know it’s not that, but you know what I mean).
Blue_Etalon@reddit
I listened to it. The audio quality was not great, but you could distinguish the voices. I think the point of publishing it was to see if anyone could identify the alarm that was going off. It was as bad as you could imagine.
unreqistered@reddit
it was good enough to be horrifying …
Cauvinus@reddit
I briefly played it at work earlier and it was fairly noisy but definitely intelligible, and somewhat chilling.
malcifer11@reddit
Sobering but not horrifying
Imaginary-Spray3711@reddit
The reconstruction that was posted here earlier was inaccurate and was removed.
ArjenHVA@reddit
What made it inaccurate?
Imaginary-Spray3711@reddit
Read the CVR transcript in the NTSB docket. The voices are not those of the actual crew members. They are AI generated. Does any of that count toward lack of accuracy?
Jazzlike_Climate4189@reddit
It was not “AI generated”, they reconstructed the MP3 file from the spectrogram data.
Imaginary-Spray3711@reddit
The voices are not those of the actual crewmembers.
Jazzlike_Climate4189@reddit
Then the song you’re listening to is not the actual voice of the singer.
perplexedtortoise@reddit
IIRC it isn't a perfect 1-to-1 reconstruction since only amplitude and frequency of the audio is known. Without phase it's an approximation (I think)
I don't think this is why the mods removed it though.
Admiral_Cloudberg@reddit
It was removed because colleagues of the deceased pilots complained.
perplexedtortoise@reddit
That makes sense.
Also, I'm a massive fan of your work!!!
Yosh145@reddit (OP)
It was accurate, any spectrograph can be reconstructed almost to the original file it’s just signals
flying_wrenches@reddit
It’s inaccurate. Those aren’t the pilots voices.
baronmunchausen2000@reddit
Didn’t someone post a few weeks ago that the practice of not releasing CVR audio started because an accident crew was on the CVR discussing personal and embarrassing anecdotes?
sizziano@reddit
Correct. The pilot unions then lobbied the NTSB to not publicly release CVRs and they obliged.
is-this-a-nick@reddit
Pilots really have tons of perks they should not have. Every bus driver has CCTV camera covering their actions and the road but cockpits are holy sites that cannot ever have that it seems.
bnh35440@reddit
Almost as if the barrier to entry and level of trust between a bus driver and pilot are vastly different, and commend different levels of surveillance
is-this-a-nick@reddit
Never seen a bus driver murder 100+ people before, happened a couple times the last decade alone with pilots.
bnh35440@reddit
So you’ll have a video of a pilot murder hundreds of people, now what?
Rubes2525@reddit
Meanwhile, truck drivers have driver facing cams with audio and zero privacy protections. I highly doubt the truck driver who witnessed the crash consented to having his face plastered everywhere, same with the truck driver who almost got crushed by the 767 in Newark. And commercial pilots want to whine about CVRs? Freaking ridiculous.
quesoandcats@reddit
That’s one of the big benefits of being a unionized workforce! Do we know if the teamsters push back against truck surveillance at all?
Distinct-Seesaw1894@reddit
Workforce? 🤣 🤣 🤣 Is that what they call it in the union? Every time I ride by a union job it’s usually only one guy working a bunch of guys standing around thinking, someone owes them something watching them more than what they’re making to hold up the ladder. I suppose they’re gophers but damn. The union ain’t shit and it ain’t healthy for the economy. Horrible work horrible work ethic shitty fucking people nine times out of 10.
deleted_by_reddit@reddit
[removed]
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CordialColt@reddit
Im a CDL driver represented by the Teamsters. The Teamsters arent great but, at least in my contract, we do prohibit driver facing cameras and truck cab audio recorhe'll. We do allow exterior facing cameras to record though, and it has saved my bacon in the past. Im sure the lack of driver surveillance is costing the company a pretty penny due to insurance, but its wonderful to not worry about a camera on me all day.
I don't know how non union drivers do it... seems like hell.
siouxu@reddit
✊
No-Audience-1969@reddit
And cops getting shot or stabbed on body cam and then being uploaded to Youtube, etc. It is stupid and ridiculous.
notfromchicago@reddit
Not the same.
No-Audience-1969@reddit
If you say so :)
ColeTrain4EVER@reddit
Yippie…
railker@reddit
While that helped make it a federal offence in the US, I know it's also in ICAO's guidance that it's in thr states control to make sure audio or images from the cockpit aren't released to the public, had that been in that Annex for longer and the NTSB was just behind? Or did that come after this accident and ICAO figured it was a good idea, too.
biggsteve81@reddit
It was Delta flight 1141
Massive-Awareness-59@reddit
We used to listen to these as part of accident studies in flight training. I wondered why they stopped releasing them. I figured after I wasn't as directly involved in the field any more I just lost that access to people that had them.
ce402@reddit
CVR audio hasn’t been released to the public in 40 years.
Transcripts and ATC recordings have.
Roy4Pris@reddit
Probably which cabin crew members they were sleeping with.
For reals, I have a friend who has been cabin crew for 30 years. When you take a bunch of people out of their time zone, add hotels and alcohol, good times and even better mistakes will occur.
1320Fastback@reddit
This reminds me of early COVID days when the boomers showed just how out of touch with technology they were with their zoom calls.
How could the NTSB not expect this?
Serpico2@reddit
So, off topic so this will get deleted but I was on a zoom call in a major US metro involving about 60 principals in city government. One of the boomer contractors thought he had disabled his camera and took his laptop into the bathroom to take a shower. He walked full nude in front of the camera.
He quietly retired the next week.
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rotundrikishi@reddit
Silly we ruin someones career for something everyone recognizes is a mistake.
MountainPlanet@reddit
I work for an aerospace manufacturer that employs a lot of highly talented engineers, and it’s definitely true that people who are highly qualified and competent in one field don’t always realize their limitations when it comes to other forms of specialized knowledge. It’s not always an age related issue with technology, although the two certainly can go hand-in-hand.
codelapiz@reddit
The people working on looking for paterns in the cockpit data are definatly gonna be competent in digital signal processing. The same classes that thougth them how to do fourier transforms to get the frequency domain graph also thougth about and how to do inverse fourier transforms to undo fourier transforms and go back to time domain..
AardQuenIgni@reddit
I assume it's just like any company where everyone younger and not in positions of power were telling all the older people that this was a bad idea.
I'm sure currently there's an old man yelling at a young person saying "why didn't you tell me they could do this???" And that same old man was probably warned 600 times.
seang239@reddit
Sounds a lot like ageism there guy. We should be aware of our ‘isms and do better.
FatSteveWasted9@reddit
No. Gotta put a stop to needlessly policing others tone. Mind your own, be your own.
AardQuenIgni@reddit
Jesus Christ have we really forgotten what being absurd is? I don't hate old people just because I made one comment about old people not know technology. It honestly just sounds like you're insecure about qualifying for AARP.
seang239@reddit
What? How about you replace young with black and old with white and see how that reads to you. That’s a different ‘ism.
Do with that information what you will dude, you be you. Getting all explosive because someone pointed something out to you is a real great look btw.
AardQuenIgni@reddit
Bro get the fuck over yourself 😂😂
seang239@reddit
I’m not upset. Have a the night you deserve guy.
AardQuenIgni@reddit
Thanks! I couldn't have asked for a better night
seang239@reddit
Cool. Idk why you think I’m feeling some type of way. I was just pointing it out in case you’re the guy at work who uses shit like that but instead of old/young or black/white you also joke around about Asians/Japanese etc and think that’s all good too.
Seriously, you should at least make an attempt to do better.
AardQuenIgni@reddit
I can't read all this, I'm too busy having the best night in the world like I deserve
kaupulehu@reddit
Why are we assuming the file release was inadvertent.
Tony_Three_Pies@reddit
“Could be because people were reconstructing the audio from the spectrogram.”
Of course that’s why. I’m surprised the NTSB didn’t see that coming. If there one universal truth in the modern world it’s that people gotta get them likes.
Cauvinus@reddit
I watched/listened to one here on my lunch break, haven’t had a chance to go look for it again since I got off work so idk if it’s been removed.
RogerRabbit1234@reddit
I’ve seen a lot of fucked up things on the internet over the last few decades. Cockpit Voice Recordings of major accidents or leaked cabin footage of planes going down, I refuse to fuck with. I don’t need that second hand trauma rolling around in the back of my head at night.
Cauvinus@reddit
Now that you mention it, I’ve never gone out of my way to find these things either. Probably for the better.
DalinarOfRoshar@reddit
Same reason I never watched any videos of the Charlie Kirk murder. I saw many links in those first few hours, but the reactions people had to them were chilling enough. I don’t need that rolling around in my head.
Time_Literature3404@reddit
I accidentally saw the Kirk thing. That shit sticks with a person. I still see it from time to time in my mind. Horrific.
950771dd@reddit
Complete bullshit you're making up. The only existing footage is from the Yeti flight and it's widely known.
railker@reddit
Yes, mods removed that thread where it was posted in r/aviation.
flying_wrenches@reddit
We do not allow NSFW footage.
railker@reddit
As you shouldn't. And it's illegal, and against ICAO guidance for an investigation to release that at all.
AlexanderLavender@reddit
Good thing I'm just some guy and not the ICAO then
ThrowAwaAlpaca@reddit
Which is why they never did. A picture isn't the audio.
rhineauto@reddit
How is reconstructing audio from a spectrogram illegal?
floo82@reddit
It's not. The NTSB shouldn't have released it in any form, but there's nothing illegal about viewing / listening to it if they do.
perplexedtortoise@reddit
It's not. People are confusing ICAO & US government rules on agencies releasing CVR audio with the NTSB knowingly releasing an audio spectrogram that people could approximate CVR audio using signal processing techniques.
nicerakc@reddit
It’s not, but it is illegal for the NTSB to release audio (or things that could be reconstructed into audio). But yeah it’s technically not illegal to reconstruct something that they’ve publicly released (not saying it’s morally good).
8BallsAndBaseballs@reddit
So it's cool to watch planes nosedive in to the ground or in to a building, but audio is NSFW? That's pathetic.
AdoringCHIN@reddit
What was NSFW about it? I didn't get a chance to listen to it but I assumed it was just a recreation like what you'd hear on Mayday
flying_wrenches@reddit
It was the actual sound file. Think of sound turned into a picture. By turning that picture back into sound, you can actually hear what they are saying. Up until they crash.
It is terrifying to hear.
la_fleurr@reddit
What did they say?
ischmal@reddit
They just said exactly what was on the transcription. I think people are making it out to be much more than it really reveals, which just drives more people to find it and listen to it.
flying_wrenches@reddit
I’d rather not say. Feel free to go find it elsewhere, but I seriously wouldn’t recommend it.
Theaspiringaviator@reddit
you can search it up on X for anyone interested
jamesalanlytle@reddit
Not anymore seems to have been removed there too now
sizziano@reddit
It's still on /r/aircrashinvestigation
basilect@reddit
There's a difference between "conceptually possible" and "able to do it in the wild, from a bad resolution image"
terrymr@reddit
It’s a printout of the sound. It’s not even hard to play it back.
qdp@reddit
I am not sure what value including the spectrograms gave to the overall report short of converting them into audio. Maybe just shows you the intensity of noise over time and the pitch of warnings or aircraft noises.
gscalise@reddit
There was an unexplained 6.35kHz ringing noise that started shortly after rotation that couldn't be identified by the CVR group. The spectrograms were there to try to figure out the source of the noise by correlating it with other events occurring over time and then to determine if the MD-11F CVRs can still considered airworthy.
basilect@reddit
They were trying to figure out exactly when the engine fire alarms sounded, and whether the stick shaker was going at points in the flight (thus they provided the CVR spectrogram vs engine fire alarm and stick shaker recording spectrograms)
BS_BlackScout@reddit
Software that allows these types of "reverse engineering" aren't new.
airfryerfuntime@reddit
No, but it took a special kind of nerd to use that software in the past.
codelapiz@reddit
It dosent take that much of a nerd to get past attempts at censoring it. So all you need is one nerd to reverse it and it will spread.
FatSteveWasted9@reddit
The gate keepers can’t control the information when the masses can use an app to do what only professionals could do before.
Exotic-Sale-3003@reddit
Yes but the ability for someone with no technical knowledge to build a one time tool to do this for like $10 is new.
RobotMaster1@reddit
people were using LLMs to do it on twitter.
Exotic-Sale-3003@reddit
Yeah that tracks
RogerRabbit1234@reddit
Yeah, but I just Grok to do it with a different spectrograph and it spit out something passable in about 3 minutes.
Only_Razzmatazz_4498@reddit
It’s just cheaply accessible and doesn’t require special knowledge making it easy for everyone to do.
codelapiz@reddit
"advances in image recognition and computational methods" no imagine recognition is needed you can litrally manually enter the frequency domain data. We have known about inverse discrete fourier transfroms since atleast the 19th century. And we have had Inverse fast fourier transform algorithms since the 1960s. Im not over exhaderating. If you time traveled to the 1960s and gave printouts of those graphs to an expert at the time he would be able to reconstruct the audio. He would need compute time worth a lot more than we need today but its completely possible.
excusing this as being blindsided by innovation is extremely dishonest. You used discrete fourier transforms to create those graphs. If you didnt sleep in your maths or signal processing class you would know the inverse algorithms exist.
Low-Bar-4471@reddit
If anyone wants the audio just DM me. It's not upsetting and the mod is a pussy.
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AlexandraMaryWindsor@reddit
Yes, they're being really biased on this one...
ComradeRK@reddit
It's unsurprising, but disappointing and frankly ghoulish that people feel the need to do this.
Jazzlike_Climate4189@reddit
We have the full transcript so what’s the difference just hearing it audibly?
No-Audience-1969@reddit
How is it ghoulish and disappointing to want to learn more about the crash? The CVR reconstruction posted here reinforced that the pilots were consummate professionals to the end.
BoringBob84@reddit
But what if they weren't? What if they were praying or crying or freaking out or expressing their last wishes and their love for their families? Sure, the NTSB should consider if that audio was relevant to the investigation, but anything that was personal should remain private.
No-Audience-1969@reddit
Then who cares? I want to know more about the crash. It's human nature.
BTW, the reason CVR is not released to the public in the U.S. is not because of some noble cause or privacy for the family. It's because a past recording was incredibly unprofessional and reflected poorly on the profession, and then lobbying happened to stop the release of CVR audio going forward.
diezel_dave@reddit
I agree. I believe it is in the public interest to make ALL data from a mishap publicly available. I know it sounds insensitive, but the pilots will not care and I mean that will all possible respect.
BoringBob84@reddit
I see no public benefit to releasing sensitive personal details that are not relevant to the flight and could harm them and their families.
diezel_dave@reddit
That's a valid argument but on the flip side, if you are entrusted with the lives of potentially hundreds of passengers, I think the public interest outweighs the right to privacy that a deceased flight crew may have wanted to maintain.
Here's a way it can serve public benefit and I'm sure there are other reasons that someone could come up with: CVR audio is released that makes it very clear the flight crew experienced a total breakdown of CRM that exacerbated the issue. Now the public knows there are deficiencies in training CRM and handling stressful situations effectively.
yourlocalFSDO@reddit
The transcript is a perfectly effective way of getting that information across. There is no reason to release the audio recording.
diezel_dave@reddit
Released transcripts don't include the controversial conversations that people are seemingly saying shouldn't be public knowledge.
yourlocalFSDO@reddit
If the conversation isn’t relevant to the investigation it’s not included. If it is relevant it is. You have no right to read someone’s personal conversation that isn’t relevant to the sequence of events leading to the accident
diezel_dave@reddit
I'm my opinion, the public DOES have the right to know the "personal" conversation that is occurring between the crew that is entirely responsible for passenger safety. I work in a professional setting where it's not appropriate for me to talk in a way that would be embarrassing for someone else to hear, so why are you holding flight crew to a different standard?
yourlocalFSDO@reddit
I have a feeling you’re not constantly recorded in your workplace and if you were you wouldn’t love having those recordings subject to release to the public.
diezel_dave@reddit
I'm not recorded at work, but I am in close vicinity to the customer I support, so there is functionally no difference. If someone put a microphone in my face, I'd have no problem not saying something inappropriate for my 8 hour work shift. That's not a lot to ask, frankly.
Police wear body cameras and their "personal" conversations are subject to public release, as they should be. This seems no different to me.
The only reason CVR data isn't released anymore is because it showed that a flight crew was acting unprofessionally and pilots lobied to make it illegal.
BoringBob84@reddit
I disagree. Again, investigators have access to the entire recording. They have a legitimate "need to know." The general public does not.
Investigators would already know this. Embarrassing the crew by releasing their sensitive personal conversations to the public provides no public benefit, nor any benefit to aviation safety.
ShitNoPsychoBitch@reddit
Seems if the pilots know it’ll be released if there’s a mishap, they’ll make sure to keep it professional.
BoringBob84@reddit
Or they will find another employer who will protect their privacy, and the airline will have to pay much more to recruit and retain top talent. And that will make the job miserable and cost the traveling public more money needlessly.
And for what? So some trolls on social media can poke fun of the deceased?
ShitNoPsychoBitch@reddit
You realize they were all released until after delta 1141 and what you’re describing wasn’t ever a problem?
This is a national law btw, not an airline rule.
BoringBob84@reddit
I wonder if anything has changed since 1988. Probably not. Internet trolls and opportunistic social media influencers were just as much of a problem back then. /sarcasm
I agree. If I am doing nothing wrong, then I have no reason to fear those police officers breaking into my house at 2 am. The burden is on me to prove my innocence - not on them to prove my guilt. /sarcasm
ShitNoPsychoBitch@reddit
You probably think those osha safety films should be removed as well so workers don’t view embarrassing personal private moments as well? We should all live in Goldilocks land and hold hands while we sing kumbaya.
They lobbied to stop releasing them because Delta got embarrassed with how unprofessional their pilots were behaving while breaking sterile cockpit with flight crew that wasn’t even supposed to be on the flight deck.
Nevermind not even checking the checklist items. That aircraft was so far from being configured for takeoff that the warning system didn’t even sound the alarm about flaps not set.
Not sure what you’re talking about with cops kicking in doors at 2am or proving stuff. We’re talking about safety and learning from others. I’m not sure if you’re comprehending what we’re talking about here actually.
frost08887@reddit
You make aviation less safe
frost08887@reddit
Fuck you, get off this fourm. You have no idea how the sausage is made in your fake politically correct world.
BoringBob84@reddit
The friends and relatives of the deceased may care, especially if the crew said very personal things with the reasonable expectation of privacy (since it is illegal for NTSB to release them to the public).
I would be extremely upset if I lost a relative this way and their last words on earth were spread all over the internet like some kind of a disrespectful joke. We all know how cruel people can be online.
Hot_Lava_Dry_Rips@reddit
Im not sure why pilots woukd think they have a reasonable expectations of privacy in the cockpit. No other profession has that and they shouldnt either.
BoringBob84@reddit
They don't expect complete privacy. As I explained, they know that they are being recorded and those recordings can be used by investigators. Releasing personal information to the public would not help aviation safety and it would harm the crew and their families.
wizza123@reddit
Can you be more specific on what personal information your referring to?
BoringBob84@reddit
Anything that investigators determine is not relevant to the investigation.
Maybe the captain likes pineapple on pizza. Maybe the first officer reveals in confidence that he is an heir to a fortune. Either way, it is none of the public's business.
wizza123@reddit
I agree with the first part, but what if the captain says he likes pineapple on pizza as the plane is crashing.
BoringBob84@reddit
Then the investigators would consider that his poor judgement was a contributing factor to the crash and include that in their report, along with a recommendation to screen flight crews for pepperoni preference. 😉 🍕
wizza123@reddit
I disagree. This is their workplace and they have no expectation of privacy. They also know they are being recorded. Don't say anything on recording you don't want coming back to you. That should be basic common sense these days.
Hot_Lava_Dry_Rips@reddit
Kind of sounds like pilots released that information. They should know theyre being recorded and should expect that the recordings are public information.
BoringBob84@reddit
I understand internet bravado - like the people who believe that police officers should not be able to turn off body cameras, even in the bathroom.
Of course, there are valid reasons for surveillance of employees in some jobs, but beyond that, it is just cruelty. It punishes innocent people for no public benefit, and it makes it even more difficult to attract and retain the best people in difficult professions.
Hot_Lava_Dry_Rips@reddit
This isnt the bathroom, its their workstation. Not even comparable. Try again.
Its not cruel to record voice audio in a cockpit, especially when pilots know theyre being recorded. Just like its not cruel to record my internet usage on a company computer and its not cruel for them to record.my phone conversations. If I dont want them to know my personal comings and going, I simply dont conduct them at work. Not sure how a pilot cant comprehend that. Plenty of other professions do this when lives are on the line. Pilots arent so special that they should be allowed to work unsupervised no matter how much this subreddit wants to call pilots heros for going to work.
BoringBob84@reddit
No one said that. We are talking about releasing sensitive personal information from those conversations to the general public.
Recording it and using it for work-related reasons is not the same as releasing your personal information to the public.
No one is saying that. People with a need to know have access. The public doesn't need to know personal details.
frost08887@reddit
You’re uninformed and ignorant. You have no clue what goes into a flight deck atmosphere.
frost08887@reddit
Go fuck yourself
usrdef@reddit
Who cares? They are human.
I am be extremely damn professional.
But I can promise you; if I am 20 seconds away from my own death and I can see it coming; that CVR is going to have a whole lot of F-bombs on it that you're going to have to bleep out.
BoringBob84@reddit
Violating someone's dignity for no public benefit is nothing more than cruelty, in my opinion. Investigators and the public need to know what the crew said about the stall warning. They don't need to know what the crew said about their love lives.
TalbotFarwell@reddit
No public benefit? Can you not see the value in having transparency in government?
BoringBob84@reddit
Are you alleging corruption in the NTSB? If so, wouldn't it start to show when they share the data with other international investigating agencies (as it did when the EAIB tried to cover up Ethiopian airlines' culpability in ET302)?
usrdef@reddit
Oh no. There have been multiple crashes in the past, where those stories about what they were doing that weekend were extremely relevant to the case.
It ended up showing that the crew spent way too much time talking about their personal lives, and failed to catch important steps of their checklists that they did not complete and were way too distracted.
When it comes to a crash, every single second of audio is vital. It could be something as simple as a single beep in the background.
If the crew is having a casual conversation; are they not paying attention to the task at hand? Do they sound extremely tired, are they saying their sentences properly, or is there slurred speech or some type of indication that they are mentally impaired due to a medical condition.
Every single second matters.
BoringBob84@reddit
Yes, and investigators will listen to the full audio to make this determination. If the crew was distracted by personal discussions, then investigators will list that in their report as a contributing factor. That is what the public needs to know. What the crew actually said about personal matters - whether they were talking about their stamp collections or about their extramarital affairs - is none of the public's business.
railker@reddit
If we need to hear the sound of humans facing their death to grasp that concept, we've got bigger problems.
SuperChingaso5000@reddit
If you cannot handle hearing the sound of humans facing their death in a CVR recording, you should not be in a cockpit. For one example, CRM is more than words on a page and there is value in audio.
No-Audience-1969@reddit
More like humans are morbidly fascinated with death and the process generally, and experiencing via audio the pilot's heroic efforts is simply a side effect of that curiosity.
Blue_Etalon@reddit
Mixed feelings on that. I listened to the audio that was previously posted on this sub of the reconstructed spectrogram. Yes, it was horrible. But it also gave me more insight into what happened, I'm not sure it's that much different than the videos of the plane crashing into the scrap yard. If nothing else, it reinforced in my mind how heroic the crew was in trying to save the plane.
spinlesspotato@reddit
Is that audio still available somewhere?
flying_wrenches@reddit
Any reposts on this sub are subject to a punishment we deem fitting.
That footage is unacceptable.
No-Audience-1969@reddit
Unacceptable, who has deemed it so? Unethical, how? Unprofessional, on a social media chat site? What?
flying_wrenches@reddit
File it under social eddiquete. You don’t post that type of stuff. Not here, leave that for 4 Chan or one of the gore subreddits.
SuperChingaso5000@reddit
Stupid policy on NTSB's part, moderator overreach on /r/aviation's part. Social "eddiquete" (lol) is very different than NSFW.
sourcefourmini@reddit
Why I never
TruthThruAcoustics@reddit
Unclutch your pearls 🙄
deleted_by_reddit@reddit
[removed]
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floo82@reddit
Unprofessional for... Professional redditers??
sizziano@reddit
https://old.reddit.com/r/aircrashinvestigation/comments/1tjm5ae/2976_recreation_partial_cvr/
MysticMuffintop@reddit
Download it QUICK!
sizziano@reddit
Yep it's gone. Still up on /r/aircrashinvestigation
aviation-ModTeam@reddit
This content has been removed for breaking one or more of the r/aviation rules.
If you believe this was a mistake, please message the moderators through modmail. Thank you for participating in the r/aviation community.
sizziano@reddit
Link was removed lol but its on /r/aircrashinvestigation
Yosh145@reddit (OP)
It’s the internet it’s probably copied over 1 million times, the NTSB really screwed up here
yourlocalFSDO@reddit
What insight could you have possibly gained from the audio that you can’t gain from the transcript?
Blue_Etalon@reddit
You’re kidding me, right?
yourlocalFSDO@reddit
No… I’ve read CVR transcripts from tons of accidents in case studies to learn from them and grow as an aviator. Never have I thought there was any additional information I could gain from having a recording.
Blue_Etalon@reddit
I guess I should have just read the transcripts of Neil Armstrong’s words on the moon. I mean, what more could I have learned from watching and listening to it, right?
yourlocalFSDO@reddit
That’s a ridiculous comparison. The professionals in the industry who benefit from the information gained in accident reports can get all the information they need to learn from the transcripts. There is absolutely no information of value in the recordings. The only people who enjoy the shock value and emotion of the audio have nothing to learn from it.
Blue_Etalon@reddit
Let’s stop this conversation now. This may be the dumbest take on forensic accident analysis I’ve ever heard.
yourlocalFSDO@reddit
You’ve failed to provide any way in which you think the recordings are beneficial and resort to personal attacks instead. Clearly you have no experience with this topic and no idea what you’re talking about. Have a good day.
harrythefurrysquid@reddit
Is it disappointing and ghoulish that we have multiple video angles showing the plane crashing? That we have the FDR traces? The CVR transcript?
It's a completely arbitrary line drawn to limit criticism of pilot behaviour.
Not that any criticism is warranted here so far as I'm aware, but you can see that the CVR transcript is partly redacted so we don't actually have a faithful representation of what was said.
ComradeRK@reddit
I’m not saying it’s ghoulish to criticise pilot error, I’m saying it’s ghoulish to want to listen to an audio recreation of their horrific deaths.
harrythefurrysquid@reddit
My point is that there is no inherent reason why that's any more ghoulish than watching them die in a fireball.
Ghoulishness is not the reason CVR audio is no longer released.
DimitriV@reddit
I think the difference is that we didn't watch them die in a fireball: we watched an aircraft crash in a fireball. We know that those three people were in there, but we don't see them. And that's similar to the CVR: words on a transcript are far less personal than hearing their voices, or worse. Publishing the CVR audio would be as personal as posting video from inside the cockpit.
Imagine if a family member of yours was killed, and their screams and sounds of their death were recorded and shared online. That would be horrible for you to hear, right? And it being public would feel disgustingly violating.
Those pilots were people. Their friends and families are people too. I'm as curious about plane crashes as many of us here, but nobody wants their loved one's horrible deaths shared publicly like that, and that, and the people involved, should be respected.
MmmSteaky@reddit
Generally agree, but there are exceptions. Part of our recurrent deicing training was, for many years, listening to the CVR audio from the Air Florida crash out of DCA back in the ‘80s. It definitely drove home the importance of taking contamination seriously.
perplexedtortoise@reddit
IMO the fault is solely with the NTSB for posting the spectrogram.
The NTSB could've released only the portion relating to the high frequency sound that is being investigated rather than the entire CVR spectrogram that included crew audio.
sharipep@reddit
The science of this goes way over my head. “Sound spectrum imagery”??? 😫
SexySmexxy@reddit
Basically you know that old school image of an ‘mp3’
Well within that is actually an entire sound file.
Literally your laugh your dogs bark a car passing by it can all be recorded and reduced to just the following , and it can also be done in reverse
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hs=mqGV&sca_esv=3e027c27d603e6ff&hl=en-gb&sxsrf=ANbL-n6iWTQCrQXxKt5JAGJ51rqx0-9GFw:1779468447495&udm=2&fbs=ADc_l-YQanUcJSoe62luYRIM6gsUdrPbLi6w63glmGbBPeGKs4L7_ndoqDk-0jwJiw9KyfvquLvwel5d4wRoroBFWxs0qimP2gjI9FJHfLGNM181d_a_e4fVKPRMjqE3pDTP6RW9ANmCjKJQbbNJIyOANhU-hioB8mtfQMgaeVzv22UglgVT9DLTss967Midv4jjAV3SVHjW4OpXbwVhNtpgFCwTmvJ0DqNRAy-9FLQ4lncanJ8WLCM&q=mp3+waveform&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjyyc7FrM2UAxUpUUEAHTb0FJ0QtKgLegQIIBAB&biw=402&bih=678&dpr=3
oh-pointy-bird@reddit
I did not know that dialog could be reconstructed via a spectrogram. I feel like a dummy.
SexySmexxy@reddit
I remember I found it out on Reddit a few years back.
That “picture” of an mp3 sound is all the sound right there.
If you record a recording of your voice and look at it using those mp3 waveform visualiser things you’ll see that same image all your vocal cords inflections and sounds are right there in this
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hs=mqGV&sca_esv=3e027c27d603e6ff&hl=en-gb&sxsrf=ANbL-n6iWTQCrQXxKt5JAGJ51rqx0-9GFw:1779468447495&udm=2&fbs=ADc_l-YQanUcJSoe62luYRIM6gsUdrPbLi6w63glmGbBPeGKs4L7_ndoqDk-0jwJiw9KyfvquLvwel5d4wRoroBFWxs0qimP2gjI9FJHfLGNM181d_a_e4fVKPRMjqE3pDTP6RW9ANmCjKJQbbNJIyOANhU-hioB8mtfQMgaeVzv22UglgVT9DLTss967Midv4jjAV3SVHjW4OpXbwVhNtpgFCwTmvJ0DqNRAy-9FLQ4lncanJ8WLCM&q=mp3+waveform&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjyyc7FrM2UAxUpUUEAHTb0FJ0QtKgLegQIIBAB&biw=402&bih=678&dpr=3
Whether it’s the soundtrack to avengers movies or a recording of your baby laughing it all looks just like this
Kinda blew my mind too
ic33@reddit
Depends upon the fidelity at which it is rendered.
But the fourier transform that converts magnitude vs time to frequencies vs time is invertible.
Actually, related algorithms are used to get the most important frequencies in an image or audio waveform, throw away the least important ones, and this results in compressed files like JPG or MP3. Then you invert these and get something close to the original image or audio to show or play.
Uniturner@reddit
I really would like to have heard that unidentified tone. No need for the human recording, since it’s morbid, disrespectful and anything of relevance has been documented and released. But an unusual real or recorded artefact is of interest to nerds that have spent decades working obsessively on aircraft.
I’m sorry that the crew had no viable actions to change what was in effect predetermined. And I acknowledge their deaths, the deaths of those on the ground, and those severely and catastrophically injured on the ground.
Per Ardua, Ad Astra…
Suuuumimasen@reddit
I listened to it. It broke my heart as expected. Easiest job ever till it isn't.
ScientistBoth830@reddit
Easiest job ever?
jawshoeaw@reddit
Relative to the demands experienced in an emergency, I’d say yes their jobs were normally “easy” .
Compared to sitting at my desk all day ? No.
smashedbotatos@reddit
The NTSB does not release cockpit audio recordings.
Except they did. They gave you a record, with out a record player. A high resolution spectrograph is the same thing as releasing the audio. They should known better in the first place.
old_skul@reddit
Welp...that particular horse has departed the barn.
airfryerfuntime@reddit
There's no putting that fish back in the tin.
TheAgedProfessor@reddit
You mean... exactly as they described as the reason? There is no "could be".
I_DRINK_URINE@reddit
People don't read anything anymore. 😔
perplexedtortoise@reddit
First thing I thought of when the NTSB posted the spectrogram screenshots.
bonfuto@reddit
Voice was reconstructed from a screenshot? Or did they publish more?
ArjenHVA@reddit
It's from the report "CVR Sound Spectrum Specialist’s Study" in which they tried to determine the source of an unknown cockpit ambient sound that was recorded by the CVR.
cheetuzz@reddit
How can you reconstruct audio from a screenshot? Was it a video of the spectrogram?
Yosh145@reddit (OP)
What was the sound? I am really curious because the NTSB never releases these studies
I_DRINK_URINE@reddit
Most likely electromagnetic interference and not an actual sound. They tested the CVR on another MD-11 and it had the same sound. When they turned off power to Flight Control Computer 1, the sound got much quieter.
Wires run from the cockpit area microphone all the way to the CVR in the tail. Electromagnetic noise from various systems will induce current in the wires and create noise in the recording. This has been used in previous accident investigations to detect arcing, short circuits, generator trips, and various other electrical phenomena.
atcthrowaway452@reddit
A redditor reconstructed the audio.
Yosh145@reddit (OP)
I more meant what was the sound they were looking for?
atcthrowaway452@reddit
It's literally the CVR
gscalise@reddit
A 6.35 kHz ringing noise that started right after the plane rotated during takeoff. The noise couldn't be identified by the CVR group.
Yosh145@reddit (OP)
Ahh makes sense, thanks for the answer!
Christopher112005@reddit
UPS2976 was not the only tragedy with a CVR spectrogram available; other cases such as Ukraine International 752, Atlas Air 3591, Colgan Air 3407, American Airlines 587 have a CVR spectogram image attached to the final report.
AlexandraMaryWindsor@reddit
tarheelz1995@reddit
Newsflash: Literally for decades CVR audio was public. Pearl clutching.
CounterSimple3771@reddit
"Let there be light...."
That's all I can say... The last words out of the private pilots in Maine....
That will never leave me
JoeTheBrewer@reddit
holy shit
InteractiveCream@reddit
"Hey guys I gave the bomb maker all the pieces to build a bomb, and guess what?? .... He built a bomb. So we're removing everything"
Dumbass NTSB
Economy_Link4609@reddit
So basically, thanks to the ghouls now we can't look at any docket items for a while. Lovely. They probably will now scrub any and all spectrograms from any and all dockets - which won't be quick probably.
For something nobody outside the investigative team needed to hear. The transcript tells enough.
post-explainer@reddit
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