There’s nothing wrong with being a weird, silly little freak. Unless you’re using your freakiness as an excuse to hurt other people. If you’re harming no one, you should be fine…but with one small caveat: if being a weird, silly little freak can potentially get someone hurt.
That’s what happened recently when a pair of airline pilots went viral for meowing and barking into their headsets while air traffic controllers were listening in, begging them to act like professionals.
These Airline Pilots Are in Trouble for Meowing and Barking at Each Other
The incident reportedly took place over radio frequencies at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, where audio captured the pet sounds. One pilot meowed, and another responded in kind. When a controller stepped in, literally demanding that the pilots act like professionals, the air traffic controller was met with even more meowing and barking. I laughed my way through that entire sentence.
And of course I would. It’s very funny. At least on the surface level. In reality, once the giggles subsided, you realize that maybe the airline pilots should be having such a raucous, goofy time making meows and barks in the cockpit. It makes sense, though. Aviation is an exhausting industry that’s generally humorless. These guys used to blow off steam with a drink or nine before they fly 150 people to Wichita or wherever. Now all they can do is use now and bark in the face of authority.
The FAA is investigating the meowing incident. If you were wondering, the recording itself came from a third party and was not released by the FAA itself. The pilots remain anonymous for now.
While meowing and barking on its own while flying a plane likely isn’t considered too big a deal, the biggest problem these pilots made is that this exchange happened on air traffic control frequencies. This is one of the few places where resisting the urge to not goof off his often a matter of life and death. The FAA explicitly prohibits nonessential conversation below 10,000 feet to avoid distractions, delays, or miscommunication.
Pilots’ meowing and barking is strictly a 10,000-feet-and-above kind of behavior. Keep it amongst the clouds, flyboys.
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