Would It Be That Hard to Fix? 

Second Installment 

    On our first installment we discussed the last-century communication systems used by fast-food restaurants for the use of the drive-up customers. The equipment is a trial to both customers and employees. However, I don’t want you to think the fast-food restaurants are the only ones using ancient equipment for their communications applications. 
    One other industry that I’m guessing is using Polish, World War Two reject communication equipment, is the airlines. Before I retired I spent a lot of time on planes flying hither and yon. One of the things that constantly amazed me was---well, let me explain like this. I would be sitting in my seat, working on my next appointment, reading a book, or trying to catch up on my sleep. When all of sudden the Captain or a flight attendant would pick up a mike and try to talk to us passengers. 
    It was obvious that a message was being communicated. Now either of two things would happen. If I was sitting under a speaker the volume was loud enough to distort the words so that the message, which could have been something like this, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we are about to experience some severe turbulence, so please take your seats and make sure your seat belts are securely fastened. We are in no danger as long as the…” somebody in the background hisses at the speaker, “Don’t say that, how long’ve you been doing this?” 
    The sound quality resembles a person speaking around a mouth full of dirty socks. Like I said the volume is so great from the speaker over my seat that it further distorts the message so much that I have no idea what’s being said. The nearby passengers, who are not unlucky enough to be sitting directly under a speaker, can’t hear enough of the distorted message to understand what’s about to happen to us. Passengers would look at each other, shrug their shoulders and then react in their own individual way---copious perspiration, prayer, or a little moaning, revving up the vocal cords so they were ready to render some good screaming. Just to name a few. 
    Those passengers with little or no experience with flying wonder why the flight attendants are scurrying around putting the food service carts away, and buckling themselves into their seats. Those of us who have seen this before aren’t surprised when the plane suddenly starts lurching around the sky like a drunk bucking bronco. 
    The interesting thing is that the flight attendants and the pilots know that no one can understand what’s being said. They’re just employees and probably feel that if the airline owners want to save money with ancient communications gear that didn’t even work back then, (why do you think the Poles were surprised when the German Army showed up on their borders), why should they care.
    Early in my flying experience I used to wonder as I flew the friendly skies, when is something going to happen where my understanding their garbled message is going to make a difference between life and death. My life or death. 
    And why shouldn’t I worry. I was strapped to a seat in a tin tube at thirty-five thousand feet, flying through an oxygen-less atmosphere, my life depended on one hundred and thirty- seven thousand individual parts, any one of which if it stopped functioning, could plunge this ride of my mine out of the sky. 
    I found these thoughts somewhat worrisome for a while. I finally came to the realization that no matter what happened there was nothing I could do about it whether I could understand their garbled warnings or not. So, I quite worrying, and didn’t struggle to understand what the pilots and flight crew were trying to tell me. 
    But again, would that poor communications equipment problem be so hard to correct?