Aircraft without intercoms and us semi-deaf folks
 

I have had some high frequency hearing loss since childhood, but pass the FAA whisper test without difficulty. I have had no trouble with my hearing instructing, flying pt 135 and the last 4 years at a regional, but that has all been in intercom equipped aircraft. Looking at moving up in the world and wondering how others with some hearing loss cope in the boeings and etc. without intercoms and with the wind/duct/etc. noise. Do some folks pass the FAA physical and use a hearing aid on one side for cockpit communication? Hints, advice etc. appreciated, and please speak up when you send it! :P

i have yet to see anyone operating an aircraft 121without intercoms (at least here in the lower 48). heck, in the 145 it would be near impossible due to the cockpit noise.

you should be just fine

Uh... thought the 737 and 757 crew communication was talking across the cockpit, thus the one sided headsets? Am I wrong?

They still have interphones... heck some of the bigger aircraft are noiser than a couple of the regional type aircraft (such as the 737 is louder then the DashQ series.)

What?


Boeings do not have intercoms.
The older the Boeing, the louder they are. 737 louder than 757, etc.

Jsut to be clear: The intercom/phone is for talking to the flight attendants. There is no pilot to pilot intercom in Boeings. You talk loud to communicate. In the 757/767 we take off the headset at FL180 anyway.

thats what I thought.. now.. how do us semi-deaf types cope? Am i stuck in the CRJ or Airbus products for the rest of my career?

The 737 does have a pilot to pilot intercom. Both pilots have to select flight interphone. You talk to each other either by pressing the transmit switch down on the yolk (the same way you talk to the ground crew) or press the ptt on the audio selector panel towards the cabin. This has been a HUGE controversy at Southwest as pilots have been using rubber bands to hold that switch in place thus creating a hot interphone. I'll withhold my comments on that but I've heard using this intercom with a noise cancelling headset makes the day SO nice. :D

To the original question. Wearing earplugs under a lightweight Telex type of headset is the way to go if you don't have a Bose or Sennheiser or some other million dollar headset.

S.B.

Our airline, which is an all 737 operator, took the creative route. With an approved engineering order, our I/C – R/T switch located on the RCP is no longer spring loaded in either position. The I/C position is not toggled, while the R/T is still spring loaded. With that being said, we no longer have to worry about the rubber band becoming extinct.

The Telex 450 ANR system is very nice and light weight too.

MD-11.......We yell across the cockpit

John