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In Australia it would be CASA, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

http://www.casa.gov.au/scripts/nc.dll?WCMS:STANDARD::pc=PC_91039

Experimental category allows you to fly an aircraft that isn't certified in any other category (such as "normal category"). Every aircraft has to go through the experimental stage regardless of its safety. Extensive flight testing is required during the certification process. In Australia, the experimental certificate conditions can be found here: http://www.casa.gov.au/wcmswr/_assets/main/rules/1998casr/021/021c10.pdf

However, getting an experimental certificate is usually the last step in a long process of getting the aircraft ready. Even making relatively small modifications can require an experimental certificate for an already certified aircraft type. There are a lot of restrictions imposed and a lot of supporting documentation required. I have written a fair few flight test schedules for modifications to a type certified aircraft as a requirement for experimental certificates. These reports detail the testing involved, the flight profile (limited by experimental certificate conditions such as within 25nm from an aerodrome, but in some cases can be more strict), risk analysis, etc. These documents must be approved by an airworthiness authority approved person (AP) or delegate.

I'm no longer working in the field (got sick of the politics), but I'm a former (but still qualified) aerospace engineer with experience in normal category aircraft certification.

http://casa.gov.au/scripts/nc.dll?WCMS:PWA::pc=PARTS101

Ten incidents per year (I wonder what percentage of Aussie flights that comprises) "all due to portable devices"... the article does NOT go on to detail that claim. It cites an anecdote in which one plane's systems are alleged to have come back online after a passenger turned off a device, then goes on to say that "on more than one occasion, laptop computers have been blamed for changing an aircraft's internal cabin pressure."

The incidents, logged in an Australian Transport Safety Bureau database, have been collated for the first time and detailed in the latest edition of Flight Safety Australia, published by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority."

Because the article authors didn't bother to include a link to the article, I'll assume that this is the one they're referring to. If so, this article does not in any way "collate" (collect) or "detail" them. It's a single-page article which is pretty much as insubstantive as its referer. It mentions a few anecdotes, then states:

The CAA study focused on mobiles. Researchers hooked up a VHF communica-tion transceiver, a VOR/ILS (VHF omnidi-rectional radio/instrument landing system) navigation receiver and a gyro-stabilised remote reading compass system in a screened test chamber, according to the report, Effects of interference from cellular telephones on aircraft avionic equipment. They hit the avionic equipment with microwaves of mobile phone frequencies. Even in standby mode when an actual call is not in progress, a cellphone transmits periodically to register and re-register with the cellular network and to maintain contact with a base station, the report said. As the aircraft increased its distance from the base station, the output power setting of the cellphone was increased, eventually to its maximum rating, the report added. The risk of interference is then at its greatest.

So they hit the equipment with waves, but what was the result? They forgot to mention specifics, such as "the equipment behaved unexpectedly". The paragraph trails off with the statement that "the risk of interference is then at its greatest".

Next time you're on a flight and the plane suddenly begins to climb or pitch to the left, it's probably just the kid next to you conquering level 16 on his computer game.

Or it might be the wind and/or the captain trying to navigate the plane to its destination.

Laurie Cox, a spokesman for the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, said more research was needed into the effect of electronic devices.

Bingo.

"You've got to ask, do you want to get there, or do you want to use your laptop?"

No, I don't have to ask that. I've been "getting there" for years, while surrounded by people who use electronics.

I'm not saying electronics don't cause interference. What I'm saying is that as yet there is no basis for concluding that they do cause interference, and because such evidence would not be difficult to produce I think passengers are owed more by the airline industry and FAA than having to rely on these panic puff-piece articles that come along to garner readership by stirring the shit with unsubstantiated claims. If the airline industry or any regulatory body cared about passenger safety, they'd do a real study. Failing that, the next best thing would be for the airlines to err on the side of caution and say "we don't know if electronics do or don't cause interference, so we're banning them to be safe"; at least that would be a

I agree that it is very hard to fit through a window. Unfortunately, that only means that being forced through one would be rather painful.

For a real example, when a cockpit window blows out, British Airways flight 5390. This link doesn't describe the event itself in much detail, but I do remember that he only survived through a pretty heroic effort by the flight attendants (like, his ankles were severly bruised from where they were holding onto him, all his clothes were blown off, etc). And this was only at 17,300 ft, it would have been much worse (certainly fatal) at 30,000 ft - even if the pilot had not been blown completely out of the aircraft he would have died of hypoxia after a matter of minutes.

See also an interesting article on decompression

I didn't spend long searching, but I couldn't find any real examples of incidents involving bad things happening with cabin windows, I wouldn't be surprised if the worst-case scanario (window blowing out while plane is cruising at high altitude) hasn't happened yet: the biggest danger is when the aircraft is ascending or descending and the pressure difference is changing rapidly. But this is less catastrophic than a depressurization at high altitude.

At 22:14 CST on July 6, 1989 they recorded a twin flash originating in a storm top cloud and discharging into the stratosphere.

Don't get me wrong, it'll be wonderful if the company can pull this off. It just looks like there are an awful lot of unanswered questions as to what it'll be like up at that elevation for extended periods. If I were starting up an isp based on the technology, I'd make it clear to my customers that there may be black out periods when I bring the planes down to avoid losing them to a major storm. The tradeoff is when the planes are up, they'll get terrific throughput. 98% uptime may be good enough for most people. For the 99.999 crowd, they could use the service to supplement whatever they're doing and fall back to slower circuits during a storm.