I have experienced a (partial) failure of this. On the takeoff roll, there’s a call out for “airspeed alive”. One day after leaving the airplane parked outside for a long weekend, I dutifully looked at a dead airspeed indicator and called out “airspeed alive” followed shortly by realizing the mistake and aborting the takeoff, but there’s a danger of looking and “seeing” what’s expected but not actually there.
This reminds me of some of my… I guess I should call them “non-conscious automated vocalisations”.
For a while I used to greet people with the greeting they’ve just given me: they say “hello”, I also say “hello”, they say “good morning”, I say “good morning”. Fine until my sister greeted me with “happy birthday”, though I did at least notice and stop myself after one syllable.
More seriously was when I was following a different automated greeting. I was in hospital with testicular torsion and the doctor asked “how are you?” — my polite British “fine thanks how are you?” was entirely out of my lips before I realised that this answer was not there one I wished to give and I had to add “well expect for this…”
> Fine until my sister greeted me with “happy birthday”, though I did at least notice and stop myself after one syllable.
When I'm not able to stop myself I have been forced to say,
"happy birthday ... to me". Others must think this silly reply means it's more like too many birthdays.
Other comments contradict this. Also, it doesn't pass a common sense test. How can you validate the air speed meter with zero airspeed? The correct reading is the same as a common completely broken reading.
