I thin it’s time we look at re-working our audio panels in every fleet.

Coming from corporate and military, we had a VOX (voice activated intercom) which would activate the mic when a pilot spoke (or chewed if he left the vox on while eating). Both pilots could wear their headsets on or in both ears with the bliss of noise cancelling. Missed calls were very rare and both pilots could hear each other clearly, even when flying with soft talkers.

I believe this to be a safety issue. Flying with a soft talker who mumbles his call outs is is a threat that could be minimized with a VOX system. Likewise, wearing a headset correctly minimizes missed or mis understood ATC calls, thus reducing errors and potential runway incursions (for example). Wearing a noise-cancelling headset also reduces fatigue which enhances cockpit safety.

Additionally, pilot hearing loss would be reduced enabling the new 65-67 crowd to be safer longer.

The push back would be that, “at the legacies we have always done it this way” or we can’t convince the company to upgrade our avionics due to cost, or some other nonsense.

If we really want to have a solution to this issue, a VOX audio panel is the best long-term option. Using the hot-mic below 10-18k then switching to speaker isn’t going to save our hearing over the course of 30 years.