Narrative:

At the gate before pushback; as the a flight attendant was giving us the paperwork with the passenger count; we heard chimes in the flight deck. This created incredible confusion among us. As the a flight attendant jumped back into the cabin to get the handset to contact the C flight attendant my first officer called the cabin to find out if everything was ok. At that point; no one knew who was talking to whom. The entire crew conducted themselves in a very professional and calm way as to identify them and verify that none of us had chimed the flight deck and they did not see any emergency transpiring. At the same time; it occurred to me that it could be the ground crew. I called them on the headset and the tug driver answered jumping into his programmed briefing about being ready for pushback. I could not get a word thru to ask if everything was normal outside the aircraft until he was done with his routine. I asked him if he had called the flight deck [several] times in a row and he confirmed that it was him; trying to get our attention. I explained what [multiple] chimes meant and I got a very uninterested 'ohhh...K'. After pushback; I stopped the aircraft on the ramp and contacted operations on their frequency and ask them to please instruct the ground crews on this very important safety matter. To my further surprise the lady in charge explained to me very nicely; that she had no idea that [several] chimes meant anything. She said 'oh that is very informative; thank you.' there was a moment during this event that we as a crew had no idea if the back flight attendant was under distress; or if we had an outside threat such as an undetected fire but we all knew that [several] chimes meant emergency. With all due respect; I suggest we train our ground crews so that they know of the potential of creating an emergency that doesn't exist.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air Carrier Captain reported hearing an emergency chime and was unaware of the source until questioning the ground crew.

Narrative: At the gate before pushback; as the A Flight Attendant was giving us the paperwork with the passenger count; we heard chimes in the flight deck. This created incredible confusion among us. As the A Flight Attendant jumped back into the cabin to get the handset to contact the C Flight Attendant my First Officer called the cabin to find out if everything was ok. At that point; no one knew who was talking to whom. The entire Crew conducted themselves in a very professional and calm way as to identify them and verify that none of us had chimed the flight deck and they did not see any emergency transpiring. At the same time; it occurred to me that it could be the ground crew. I called them on the headset and the Tug Driver answered jumping into his programmed briefing about being ready for pushback. I could not get a word thru to ask if everything was normal outside the aircraft until he was done with his routine. I asked him if he had called the flight deck [several] times in a row and he confirmed that it was him; trying to get our attention. I explained what [multiple] chimes meant and I got a very uninterested 'ohhh...K'. After pushback; I stopped the aircraft on the ramp and contacted Operations on their frequency and ask them to please instruct the Ground Crews on this very important Safety matter. To my further surprise the lady in charge explained to me very nicely; that she had no idea that [several] chimes meant anything. She said 'Oh that is very informative; thank you.' There was a moment during this event that we as a Crew had no idea if the back Flight Attendant was under distress; or if we had an outside threat such as an undetected fire but we all knew that [several] chimes meant emergency. With all due respect; I suggest we train our Ground Crews so that they know of the potential of creating an emergency that doesn't exist.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.