Bitching Betty is the slang term some pilots and crew (mainly North American) use when referring to the voice warnings used by some aircraft systems.

The name "Betty" is a generic popular traditional name from the American culture, and is not derived from more recent uses of the word to describe an attractive female (in reference to Betty Rubble

Betty Rubble

Elizabeth 'Betty' Jean Rubble is a fictional character in the television animated series The Flintstones and its spin-offs and live-action motion pictures. She is the black-haired wife of caveman Barney Rubble and the adoptive mother of Bamm-Bamm Rubble...

 of The Flintstones

The Flintstones

The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...

).

Today, at least in some aircraft systems, the annuciation voice 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 Bitching Bob, a male voice is used in the BAE Hawk

BAE Hawk

The BAE Systems Hawk is a British single-engine, advanced jet trainer aircraft. It first flew in 1974 as the Hawker Siddeley Hawk. The Hawk is used by the Royal Air Force, and other air forces, as either a trainer or a low-cost combat aircraft...

.

In the UK the term Nagging Norah is sometimes used, and in New Zealand the term used is Hank the Yank on Boeing aircraft.

Notable examples

There are two notable systems which today are normally found in most commercial and military aircraft, the TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System

Traffic Collision Avoidance System

A traffic collision avoidance system or traffic alert and collision avoidance system is an aircraft collision avoidance system designed to reduce the incidence of mid-air collisions between aircraft...

) and TAWS/EGPWS (Terrain Avoidance Warning System / Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System

Ground Proximity Warning System

A ground proximity warning system is a system designed to alert pilots if their aircraft is in immediate danger of flying into the ground or an obstacle. The United States Federal Aviation Administration defines GPWS as a type of terrain awareness warning system...

) which provide warnings and spoken (verbal) resolution instructions.

The auditory warnings produced by these systems usually include a warning attention sound followed by verbal command(s) to the pilot/crew. Probably most familiar to the average person is the "Pull up! Pull up!" command encountered in many video games and a few movies.

Other common spoken warnings are "Caution Terrain", "Windshear! Windshear!", or "Traffic Traffic" followed by short directions on what actions the pilot should take to resolve the situation. The TCAS and TAWS/EGPWS are usually integrated to prevent conflicting advice, e.g. telling them to "Descend! Descend!" to avoid another aircraft when the aircraft is already close to the ground.

Modern Boeing

Boeing

The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...

 and Airbus

Airbus

Airbus SAS is an aircraft manufacturing subsidiary of EADS, a European aerospace company. Based in Blagnac, France, surburb of Toulouse, and with significant activity across Europe, the company produces around half of the world's jet airliners....

 airliners both typically feature a male voice, which calls out height above terrain on approach to land, and other related warnings. Airbus aircraft usually feature a distinctive British RP

Received Pronunciation

Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...

 accent (heard on recent builds of the A320 and all Airbus aircraft since the A330 and A340) or French accent (heard on ECAM-equipped A300s, A310s and early A320s).

A female voice was incorporated into McDonnell Douglas

McDonnell Douglas

McDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturer and defense contractor, producing a number of famous commercial and military aircraft. It formed from a merger of McDonnell Aircraft and Douglas Aircraft in 1967. McDonnell Douglas was based at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport...

 DC-9, MD-80/90, MD-11 and Boeing 717

Boeing 717

The Boeing 717 is a twin-engine, single-aisle jet airliner, developed for the 100-seat market. The airliner was designed and marketed by McDonnell Douglas as the MD-95, a third-generation derivative of the DC-9. Capable of seating of up to 117 passengers, the 717 has maximum range of...

 (inherited from McDonnell Douglas after the merger with Boeing) series aircraft in the Central Aural Warning System (CAWS). This system 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 from ICAS such as "Gear up. Gear up." These may be warnings or simply declarative statements which augment the pilot's situation awareness

Situation awareness

Situation awareness, situational awareness, or SA, is the perception of environmental elements with respect to time and/or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status after some variable has changed, such as time...

.

Voice gender

Early human factors

Human factors

Human factors science or human factors technologies is a multidisciplinary field incorporating contributions from psychology, engineering, industrial design, statistics, operations research and anthropometry...

 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. A lot of this research was based on pilot experiences, particularly in combat situations, where the pilots were being guided by female air traffic controllers. They reported being able to most easily pick out the female voice from amid the flurry of radio chatter.

More recent research, however, carried out since more females have begun working in aviation as pilots and air traffic controllers, indicates that the previous hypothesis may be unreliable. General human factors wisdom now indicates largely that, either due to current culture or changing attitudes, an automated female voice is no more or less effective than the male voice.

Edworthy et al. (2003) at the University of Plymouth

University of Plymouth

Plymouth University is the largest university in the South West of England, with over 30,000 students and is 9th largest in the United Kingdom by total number of students . It has almost 3,000 staff...

, 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, however, appear to have an advantage in that they could portray a greater range of urgencies because of their usually 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 .

But Arrabito (2009) has found that with simulated cockpit background radio traffic, a male voice rather than a female voice, in a monotone or urgent annunciaton style, resulted in the largest proportion of correct and fastest identification response times to verbal warnings, regardless of the gender of the listener.

Voice Talent

There have been several "Bitching Betty's" over the years for various commercial & military aircraft, including:

• Erica Lane - F16 & Apache Attack Helicopter
• Kim Crow - Various

Other applications

Voice warning systems included in automobiles of the late 1970s to early 1980s, such as the Datsun Z-Car Series found in the 280ZX, were also known as Bitching Betty. The Datsun system issued commands such as "lights are on," or "Left door is open." Datsun's original name for the feature was "Talking Lady."

Sample Warnings from GPWS and EGPWS/TAWS

• "Terrain"
• "Terrain, Terrain"
• "Terrain Ahead!"
• "Pull Up!"
• "WHOOP WHOOP! Pull Up!"
• "Too Low, Flaps"
• "Too Low, Gear"
• "Too Low, Terrain"
• "WHOOP WHOOP! Terrain!"
• "BOO-BEEP! Windshear, Windshear, Windshear!"
• "Glideslope"
• "Sink rate"
• "Don't Sink!"
• "Bank Angle, Bank Angle"
• "Minimums" (when configured for landing)
• "Approaching Minimums"

Definitions of TCAS warnings

Situation	Message heard
TCAS not ready to fly	"TCAS System Test Fail"
TCAS ready to fly	"TCAS System Test OK"
Initial traffic advisory	"Traffic, traffic"
Change vertical speed	"Climb, climb"
	"Descend, descend"
Swap altitudes with other aircraft	"Climb, crossing climb"
	"Descend, crossing descend"
Change vertical speed more quickly	"Increase climb"
	"Increase descent"
Reversal of original advisory	"Climb, climb NOW"
	"Descend, descend NOW"
Keep vertical speed constant	"Maintain vertical speed"
Start levelling off	"Adjust vertical speed"
Remain level	"Monitor vertical speed"
Let other aircraft cross your level	"Maintain vertical speed, crossing"
Other aircraft safely passed	"Clear of conflict"

Sample Warnings from CAWS found onboard DC-9/MD-80/MD-90/MD-11/MD-10/B-717 aircraft

• "Stall, Stall"
• "Fire Left Engine" (DC-9/MD-80/MD-90/B-717)
• "Fire Right Engine" (DC-9/MD-80/MD-90/B-717)
• "Engine 1 Fire" (MD-11)
• "Engine 2 Fire" (MD-11)
• "Engine 3 Fire" (MD-11)
• "APU Fire"
• "Altitude, Altitude"
• "Cabin Altitude"
• "Overspeed"
• "Autopilot"
• "Autobrake"
• "Autospoiler"
• "Landing Gear"
• "Flaps" (in order to distinguish the warning from "Slats", "con" is inserted on the MD-80/90 whilst the word "Flaps" is slurred on the MD-11 ("Fuhhhlllapss"))
• "Slats"
• "Speedbrake"
• "Spoilers"
• "Stabilizer"
• "Stabilizer Motion"

Predictive Windshear Detection

• "Monitor Radar Display"
• "Windshear Ahead!, Windshear Ahead!"
• "Go Around, Windshear Ahead!"

External links

• The woman behind the voice