Riddle me this, pilots

"Gary L. Drescher" wrote:
A question just occurred to me, Chip. Might it not get a slightly quicker
response from the pilot if your voice sounded urgent rather than
professionally-bored?

One of the most imporant things in a crisis is to stay calm, and to
project an aura of calmness so others do the same. Once you let your
voice start to show emotion, it's all over.

Didn't you ever see Apollo-13? The whole damn spaceship is falling
apart around them and they're doing their "Houston, we've got a problem"
thing in the same tone of voice they'd use to report what they had for
lunch.

This is a human-factors question that I don't know
the answer to, but it seems plausible that an urgent tone would be helpful

You're right, it is a human factors thing. There is a certain "calm,
cool, in command of the situation" persona that you want to project,
because that's what people react best to.

especially for the typical low-time pilot who has read about traffic alerts
but never actually received one before.

Quick lesson in ATC-speak. Words like "alert" and "immediately" are not
to be taken lightly.