A voice warning system is a system designed to alert the crew of an aircraft to imminent safety hazards. It is often known as a ''Bitchin' Betty'', a

slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-g ...

term used by some pilots and aircrew and submariners (mainly North American). The enunciating voice, in at least some aircraft systems, may be either male or female. In some cases, this may be selected according to pilot preference. If the voice is female, it may be referred to as Bitching Betty; if the voice is male, it may be referred to as ''Barking Bob''. A female voice is heard on military aircraft such as the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the

Eurofighter Typhoon The Eurofighter Typhoon is a European multinational twin-engine, canard delta wing, multirole fighter. The Typhoon was designed originally as an air-superiority fighter and is manufactured by a consortium of Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo ...

and the

Mikoyan MiG-29 The Mikoyan MiG-29 (russian: Микоян МиГ-29; NATO reporting name: Fulcrum) is a twin-engine fighter aircraft designed in the Soviet Union. Developed by the Mikoyan design bureau as an air superiority fighter during the 1970s, the MiG ...

. A male voice is heard on

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and p ...

commercial airliner An airliner is a type of aircraft for transporting passengers and air cargo. Such aircraft are most often operated by airlines. Although the definition of an airliner can vary from country to country, an airliner is typically defined as an ai ...

s and is also used in the

BAE Hawk The BAE Systems Hawk is a British single-engine, jet-powered advanced trainer aircraft. It was first flown at Dunsfold, Surrey, in 1974 as the Hawker Siddeley Hawk, and subsequently produced by its successor companies, British Aerospace and B ...

. In the

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, the term ''Nagging Nora'' is sometimes used. In New Zealand, the term used for Boeing aircraft is ''Hank the Yank''. The voice warning system used on

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The ...

trains, which also uses a female voice, is known to some staff as ''Sonya'', as it "gets on ya nerves".

Notable examples

There are two notable systems, which employ voice warnings, and which are found in most commercial and military aircraft: TCAS ( traffic collision avoidance system) and TAWS/EGPWS ( terrain avoidance warning system / enhanced ground proximity warning system). Both systems provide warnings and verbal instructions. The auditory warnings produced by these systems usually include a separate attention-getting sound, followed by one or more verbal commands to the pilot/crew. Perhaps the most widely known example, encountered in many video games and movies, is the "Pull up! Pull up!" command. Other common spoken warnings are "Terrain, terrain", "

Windshear Wind shear (or windshear), sometimes referred to as wind gradient, is a difference in wind speed and/or direction over a relatively short distance in the atmosphere. Atmospheric wind shear is normally described as either vertical or horizonta ...

! Windshear!", or "Traffic! Traffic!". These may be followed by short directions to the pilot, advising how the situation may be resolved. TCAS and TAWS/EGPWS are usually integrated to prevent conflicting advice, such as an instruction to "Descend! Descend!" to avoid another aircraft when the aircraft is already close to the ground. Modern Boeing and

Airbus Airbus SE (; ; ; ) is a European multinational aerospace corporation. Airbus designs, manufactures and sells civil and military aerospace products worldwide and manufactures aircraft throughout the world. The company has three divisions: ' ...

airliners both feature a male voice, which calls out height above terrain on approach to landing, and other related warnings. Airbus aircraft feature a distinctive British RP accent (heard on recent builds of the

A320 The Airbus A320 family is a series of narrow-body airliners developed and produced by Airbus. The A320 was launched in March 1984, first flew on 22 February 1987, and was introduced in April 1988 by Air France. The first member of the famil ...

and all Airbus aircraft since the

A330 The Airbus A330 is a wide-body aircraft developed and produced by Airbus. Airbus conceived several derivatives of the A300, its first airliner in the mid-1970s. Then the company began development on the A330 twinjet in parallel with the A340 ...

and A340), or a French accent (heard on ECAM-equipped A300s, A310s and early A320s). A female voice was incorporated into

McDonnell Douglas DC-9 The McDonnell Douglas DC-9 is an American five-abreast single-aisle aircraft designed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. It was initially produced by the developer company as the Douglas DC-9 until August 1967 and then by McDonnell Douglas. Afte ...

, MD-80/90,

McDonnell Douglas MD-11 The McDonnell Douglas MD-11 is an American tri-jet wide-body airliner manufactured by American McDonnell Douglas (MDC) and later by Boeing. Following DC-10 development studies, the MD-11 program was launched on December 30, 1986. Assembly of ...

and

Boeing 717 The Boeing 717 is an American five-abreast single-aisle airliner produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The twin-engine airliner was developed for the 100-seat market and originally marketed by McDonnell Douglas as the MD-95. It was a shor ...

(inherited from McDonnell Douglas after the merger with Boeing) series aircraft in their Central Aural Warning Systems (CAWS). These systems provided a voice for most warnings, including fire, altitude, cabin altitude, stall, overspeed, autopilot disconnect, and so on. In more advanced cockpits, on newer aircraft, there may be many other voice warnings managed by an integrated indication and crew alerting system (ICAS) such as "Gear up, Gear up!" These may be warning words or phrases, or simply declarative statements that augment the pilot's

situation awareness Situational awareness or situation awareness (SA) is the perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their future status. An alternative definition is tha ...

Voice gender

Early

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research in aircraft and other domains indicated that female voices were more authoritative to male pilots and crew members and were more likely to get their attention. Much of this research was based on pilot experiences, particularly in combat situations, where the pilots were being guided by female

air traffic controller Air traffic control specialists, abbreviated ATCS, are personnel responsible for the safe, orderly, and expeditious flow of air traffic in the global air traffic control system. Usually stationed in air traffic control centers and control ...

s. They reported being able to most easily pick out the female voice from amid the flurry of radio chatter. In October 1996, a report by UK's

Defence Research Agency The Defence Research Agency (DRA) was an executive agency of the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) from April 1991 until April 1995. At the time, the DRA was Britain's largest science and technology organisation. In April 1995, the DRA was combined wi ...

on the fast jet ''Collision Warning System Technical Demonstrator Programme'' (Reference DRAMS/A VS/CR96294/1) reported: "The primary alerting signal from the CWS to the crew was an audible warning passed over the aircraft intercom system. For the first flight these warnings were given in a male voice but, on the advice of the crew, this was changed to a female voice for the second flight onwards. They said that a female voice offered greater clarity." More recent research, however, carried out since more females have been employed as pilots and air traffic controllers, indicates that the original popular hypothesis may be unreliable. Edworthy and colleagues in 2003, based at the

University of Plymouth The University of Plymouth is a public research university based predominantly in Plymouth, England, where the main campus is located, but the university has campuses and affiliated colleges across South West England. With students, it is the ...

in UK, for example, found that both acoustic and non-acoustic differences between male and female speakers were negligible. Therefore, they recommended the choice of speaker should depend on the overlap of noise and speech spectra. Female voices did appear to have an advantage because they could portray a greater range of urgencies due to their generally higher pitch and pitch range. They reported an experiment showing that knowledge about the sex of a speaker has no effect on judgments of perceived urgency, with acoustic variables accounting for such differences. Arrabito in 2009, however, at

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, found that with simulated cockpit background radio traffic, a male voice rather than a female voice, in a monotone or urgent announcing style, resulted in the largest proportion of correct and fastest identification response times to verbal warnings, regardless of the gender of the listener.

Voices

There have been several "Bitching Bettys", over the years, for various commercial and military aircraft: * Kim Crow - Crow's was the first voice to be digitized. Pilots and astronauts know her as the original Bitching Betty. * Joan Elms – known as “Sexy Sally” to the flight crews of the

Convair B-58 Hustler The Convair B-58 Hustler, designed and produced by American aircraft manufacturer Convair, was the first operational bomber capable of Mach 2 flight. The B-58 was developed during the 1950s for the United States Air Force (USAF) Strategic Air ...

on the plane's magnetic tape-based warning system. * Erica Lane – her voice can be heard in the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon and

Boeing AH-64 Apache The Boeing AH-64 Apache () is an American twin-turboshaft attack helicopter with a tailwheel-type landing gear arrangement and a tandem cockpit for a crew of two. It features a nose-mounted sensor suite for target acquisition and night vis ...

helicopter. * Sue Milne – her voice is used in the

. * Leslie Shook – her voice is used in the

Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet The Boeing F/A-18E and F/A-18F Super Hornet are twin-engine, carrier-capable, multirole fighter aircraft variants based on the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet. The F/A-18E single-seat and F/A-18F tandem-seat variants are larger and more ad ...

. Shook retired in 2016.. Boeing, 2016-03-07, Retrieved 2020-02-19. * Patricia Hoyt – her voice was used in the

and the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III. She was working in the Boeing 717 program as a mechanical engineer at the time.

Other applications

Voice warning systems included in cars of the late 1970s to early 1980s, such as the

Datsun Datsun (, ) was an automobile brand owned by Nissan. Datsun's original production run began in 1931. From 1958 to 1986, only vehicles exported by Nissan were identified as Datsun. Nissan phased out the Datsun brand in March 1986, but relaunche ...

and Nissan "Z-Car" series, found in the 280ZX and 1984–1988

300ZX The Nissan 300ZX is a sports car that was produced across two different generations. As with all other versions of the Z, the 300ZX was sold within the Japanese domestic market under the name Fairlady Z. It was sold in Japan from 1983 to 2000 a ...

(optional in the base model and standard in the Turbo model), and the Datsun Maxima and

Nissan Maxima The Nissan Maxima is a full-size car manufactured and marketed by Nissan and offered as Nissan's flagship sedan primarily in North America, the Middle East, and China — and currently in its eighth generation. Having debuted for model year ...

of the early 1980s, were also known as Bitching Betty. The Datsun system issued commands such as "lights are on", or "left door is open". The system used a small box located under the vehicle's dashboard that implemented a small, white plastic record disc that used a

magnetic cartridge A magnetic cartridge, more commonly called a phonograph cartridge or phono cartridge or (colloquially) a pickup, is an electromechanical transducer that is used to play records on a turntable. The cartridge contains a removable or permanentl ...

to play spoken commands through the vehicle's

audio system Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording te ...

's speakers, similar to that of some

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talking toys of the time period.

's original name for the feature was "Talking Lady". Some Acuras (

Honda is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, reaching a producti ...

luxury car A luxury car is a car that provides increased levels of comfort, equipment, amenities, quality, performance, and associated status compared to moderately priced cars. The term is subjective and reflects both the qualities of the car and the ...

marque in the

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, and China) of the mid 2000s would ask the driver to "please fasten your

seatbelt A seat belt (also known as a safety belt, or spelled seatbelt) is a vehicle safety device designed to secure the driver or a passenger of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result during a collision or a sudden stop. A seat belt red ...

" when the driver's seatbelt was not fastened, in addition to a chime warning. The M1 Abrams tank features a female voice warning system to warn the crew of open hatches and critical faults when equipped with the System Enhancement Package.

References

External links