New York, NY — Several commercial flights have disappeared and are presumed to have crashed this past week after the International Civil Aviation Organization decided to switch air traffic control from an Anglo-American-centric dialect to an Irish one. It’s unclear just how many planes have crashed, but according to sources in both the United States and United Kingdom governments, they believe the number to be as high as 42.
“We don’t know the exact number yet,” said US Federal Aviation Administration communications director Karen Ditchens. “The situation is very fluid. But we know that following the switch to an Irish-oriented dialect for air traffic control, we had dozens of inflight incidents across the country and the planet.”
New Jersey officials have confirmed at least one crash of a Boeing 757, which fell to the ground shortly after departing Newark, New Jersey. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials say they have recovered the airplane’s ‘black box’ from the wreckage outside Dayton, OH. In addition, Carrie Stricter, of the NTSB’s rapid recovery force, released a section for the onboard voice recorder that provided some clues about its demise.
“The last thing Captain Clark of United Airlines Flight 420 heard before the recording fell silent doesn’t provide us any insight about the nature of the failure, but there are some clues about the causes, which appears to be vast confusion.”
Air Traffic Control: “I’ll, yeah. I mean,’ll you ‘ave a mineral? she ‘as sahme neck.”
After which Clark said, “What the fuck was that?” Followed by several “oh shits” and then silence.
It’s unclear who decided to switch to an Irish accent or why it was done. However, the tragedies could have been avoided, according to Robert Colvin, the lead researcher and the Palo Alto, CA-based Rundex Family Foundation, who conducted a study last year on the most unintelligible English accents.
“Well, the data doesn’t lie,” said Mr. Colvin from his Mountain View, CA, home office. “We conducted a year-long study with Kelloggs Cereal brands to answer this exact question. And people from Ireland are the hardest people to understand, which frankly was a relief for the people of Wales, who assumed it would be them. But, instead, the Welsh came in third hardest.”
When asked who was second, Mr. Colvin paused to choose his words carefully.
“Well, in second place, we have the Creoles from Louisiana. No one has any idea what the hell they’re saying. And I have to be honest, that’s worked in their favor for almost 200 years. If I had my choice, I would have picked those folks, but I only conducted the research. So, unfortunately, I don’t get to participate in it.”
According to the FAA, they’re considering abandoning Irish and returning to what one official called “old-fashioned Los Angeles/porn-star English.”
