Narrative:

When the crew chief (cc) came on his headset and started to check in with me I noticed that there was some back ground noise. The additional voice on the headset was speaking spanish so I was in the dark as to the extent of the dialogue. I asked the cc if he could hear the extra voice and he said yes. The extra voice was not a constant source of confusion so we continued. The first officer (first officer) and I checked our audio panel to try and figure out what was happening. Our panels were in the proper configuration. I was eventually able to communicate with the cc that we were indeed ready for push back and the push was started. As the cc was telling us we could start engines the extra voice was blocking out the cc. I finally confirmed that we could start engines and decided the expeditious thing to do was start the engines with three people watching the engines in case of a fire or failure of some sort. Before I cleared the cc off and the line of communication was normal I asked him if he knew who the spanish speaker was and he said it was a spanish speaking radio station bleeding through his headset and he said it happens fairly often. Obviously; my concern is the safety aspect of having an additional voice blocking out an emergency call from the cc or my inability to communicate a problem that we were having. Not a good scenario. My desire to get the aircraft out on time and getting the flight underway weighed too heavily on my decision to continue. I allowed myself to put the operation in a potentially dangerous situation - although that only occurred to me after I had time to think about what had just occurred. I should have stopped the push - better yet I never should have started the push. I should have had the cc get a new headset or make sure we were all comfortable with hand signals. We should make sure that our cc's have communication equipment that aren't susceptible to outside interference. I don't know if this was a bluetooth system failure; but if it was; we need better and safer headsets for our ground personal.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air carrier Captain reported bleed-through from a nearby radio station into the headset of ground crew blocked some communications during pushback at MIA airport.

Narrative: When the Crew Chief (CC) came on his headset and started to check in with me I noticed that there was some back ground noise. The additional voice on the headset was speaking Spanish so I was in the dark as to the extent of the dialogue. I asked the CC if he could hear the extra voice and he said yes. The extra voice was not a constant source of confusion so we continued. The FO (First Officer) and I checked our audio panel to try and figure out what was happening. Our panels were in the proper configuration. I was eventually able to communicate with the CC that we were indeed ready for push back and the push was started. As the CC was telling us we could start engines the extra voice was blocking out the CC. I finally confirmed that we could start engines and decided the expeditious thing to do was start the engines with three people watching the engines in case of a fire or failure of some sort. Before I cleared the CC off and the line of communication was normal I asked him if he knew who the Spanish speaker was and he said it was a Spanish speaking radio station bleeding through his headset and he said it happens fairly often. Obviously; my concern is the safety aspect of having an additional voice blocking out an emergency call from the CC or my inability to communicate a problem that we were having. Not a good scenario. My desire to get the aircraft out on time and getting the flight underway weighed too heavily on my decision to continue. I allowed myself to put the operation in a potentially dangerous situation - although that only occurred to me after I had time to think about what had just occurred. I should have stopped the push - better yet I never should have started the push. I should have had the CC get a new headset or make sure we were all comfortable with hand signals. We should make sure that our CC's have communication equipment that aren't susceptible to outside interference. I don't know if this was a bluetooth system failure; but if it was; we need better and safer headsets for our ground personal.

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.