Discretely Listening to Commercial Aircraft Radio

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I always wondered why they did not let us listen to takeoff and landing
ops.
That's the best part! g

I remember flying United into LAX late one night many years ago. I
was listening on channel 9 as we approached the airport at about 6,000
feet. Suddenly I hear ATC call our plane with something like:

"United 123, traffic your altitude one mile, descend _immediately_ to
four thousand !!"

I turned to my seatmate and said, "Hang on". A instant later, the
nose dove over and we all went weightless. Never had that happen in
a commercial liner (on purpose) before or since.

A half minute later, the captain comes on the PA system and casually
explains, "Ah, we're sure lucky tonight. Air traffic control just
gave us a quicker approach to the airport, so we'll get there sooner"

A cooler fib, I've never heard.

Cool story. I would imagine that they tend to stop the in-cabin ATC channel
because of situations like that and the fact that the perpensity to screw up
increases during the take-off and landing phases.