Originally Posted by
yellowtriumph
Just a quick aside if I may. Whilst we were in the departure lounge at Houston many years ago there were lots of tannoy announcements asking individual members of the public to pick up the nearest white phone etc. In amongst all the announcements was one for 'Mr Pickle, Mr Dill Pickle please pick up the nearest phone etc'. We listened quite attentively after that to weed out the real ones from the fake ones. Maybe bored staff or someone trying to win bet of some sort!
Not saying that this was the case here, but airport PA announcements may be coded messages for staff. Such as "Mr. Pickles and party please report to Gate 18" can be code for security personnel to get down to Gate 18 to deal with an unruly passenger. Or "Mr. Chutney and party please report to Gate 18" could be code for medical personnel to get to Gate 18. The goal of all this being to avoid alerting the miscreant or alarming other pax. Note that for coded messages to be effective, the name cue (Mr. Pickles or Mr. Chutney) must be both memorable and uncommon. Using Mr. Smith as a code call is not wise.