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What I do want to emphasize is that the FAA is not changing its rules....If an air carrier elects to permit cell phone usage (or other PED) onboard during flight, they must determine that the use of that particular model phone won’t interfere

This means, FAA will continue to ban cellular phones — because, given the variety of devices, it is impossible to certify each model as non-interfering.

Either way, FAA's ban exists, just as I said. And, according to the FAA official, it is not going away...

whether "only allowed under certain conditions" constitutes a ban

That depends on the conditions, does not it? The cited conditions — airline certifying each phone model — does constitute a ban. Or do you see the flight attendant checking "Oh, sorry, sir, you have iPhone 5c — you can't use it, only iPhone 5 has been certified"?

And further down it says: "If this happens, the FAA is apparently going to let individual airlines make their own decisions as to whether or not to allow the cell calls."

Just as I said, both FAA and FCC ban it. Just as I said, FAA is (or was a year ago) forcing individual airlines to claim, the phones "interfere" with the plane.

More here and, quite officially, here...

This was all so easy for you to find yourself, I strongly suspecting, you aren't arguing in good faith...

Thank you for the only? useful comment in this thread. If the editor is listening, it might have been useful to have had this information in the summary.

Here's some information from the article on the legal loopholes:

The chatbot uses American rebooking rules on a ticket to switch flights and obtain refunds. It uses rules like the “24 hour rule,” weather warnings, and airline compliance with laws against price gouging to find cheaper tickets. Every five seconds, the chatbot checks for a deal up until the time of your departure, when weather and cancellation loopholes appear more often, according to Browder. DoNotPay actually books and holds the seat for you with its own money until your old seat can be canceled, using the bot’s VC funding.

Because it isn’t versed in other countries’ rebooking rules, the chatbot only works on US airlines with flights that depart from inside the US, whether domestic or international. It doesn’t work for flights flying from international into the US. (The chatbot can also check for lower hotel prices from five hotel chains, including Hilton, Intercontinental, Hyatt, Marriott and Best Western, but it doesn’t cover every hotel yet.)

Yep, I'm going to point out a bridge. I drove over the I35 bridge in Minneapolis nearly every day coming home from work prior to it's collapse. It was dumb luck I didn't leave work 10 minutes later that day or I would likely have been on it when it went down.

But hey, if you don't want to take my anecdotal example, you can just go check transportation.gov and get a state by state breakdown of structurally deficient bridges yourself:

https://www.transportation.gov...

Now maybe you don't take much stock in their numbers, but personally after watching the bridge I made my daily commute over for years catastrophically collapse, I think it's worth at least considering that there may be some truth to these claims.

DOT, not NIST

https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/time-act
http://timezonereport.com/?page_id=313

Few people are farmers. The only change to the clock that makes sense if you're not going to stick with the geographical approximation of mean noon, is anti-DST, which is what this proposal equates to. I don't need sunlight at 6AM when I'm not awake, and prefer to not be heading home in the dark at 5PM. I'd welcome the shift, and it seems like many others agree.

I thought I replied to this, but now don't see it - that link describes involuntary bumping; I was talking about voluntary bumping. There should be no such thing as involuntary bumping - the airlines should keep upping the incentives for people to volunteer until they have enough.

Sadly, for voluntary bumping, the DoT doesn't want to be involved but rather let you directly negotiate with the airline (no specific rules). You can read on Overbooking at their site.

It looks like there actually is a maximum ($1,350).

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cf...

You should be using this link instead because it is from DoT. :)

Level 5 means not having any controls that a human can use. So, unless their "future upgrade" includes ripping out the steering wheel and pedals, etc, then the car is only "level 4 ready".

No, level 5 simply means fully autonomous, the system controls everything with no human interaction.

SAE definitions: http://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/a...

DOT's definitions (hint: they adopted SAE's rather than NHTSA's): https://www.transportation.gov... (page 11)

Nothing in the 15 point checklist requires perfect safety. In fact, most of the items are just "it should include something that tries to do X" where X is "obey local traffic laws", "refuse to go into automatic mode if sensors are damaged", "save data if there's a crash" and "switch safely from autopilot to manual control."

The actual document can be found here and simple summary that leaves out a lot can be found here.

https://www.transportation.gov...

The Safety Assessment would cover the following areas:
  Data Recording and Sharing
  Privacy
  System Safety
  Vehicle Cybersecurity
  Human Machine Interface
  Crashworthiness
  Consumer Education and Training
  Registration and Certification
  Post-Crash Behavior
  Federal, State and Local Laws
  Ethical Considerations
  Operational Design Domain
  Object and Event Detection and Response
  Fall Back (Minimal Risk Condition)
  Validation Methods

GrpA

I wish I could mod the previous AC up, but I'll have to use my karma instead. Here's a link to the actual subject of the story:

https://www.transportation.gov/AV

Amazing that neither the /. editor nor the linked/plagiarized Vox article bothered to provide it.

Seriously - the article link is to a Vox article?

https://www.transportation.gov/AV/federal-automated-vehicles-policy-september-2016

Yep, and this is why businesses rather pay for damages and lost lives than redesign faulty parts.

Sometimes this may be appropriate, yes. It is all about costs — and a cost of a Westerner's life is under $10 million today. So, for example, raising the cost of 20 million cars by 50 cents each to save one life is stupid, but may make sense for two or more lives.

Before you denounce "putting a price on human life", that is the criteria government agencies use to issue their rulings... They just aren't as good about it on average, as the business-owners themselves would be.

Dumbass.

Yes, you certainly seem to be... Read more, write less — there is hope for everyone...

For the record, I am an airline pilot (previously military), subject to DOT regulations governing safety sensitive public positions. I think truck drivers, rail, public transit, etc are subject to these regulations: https://www.transportation.gov/odapc/

I can understand the policy to which I'm subject. As for other types of employers, they might be trying to "weed" out (sorry for the pun) candidates that actuarially could represent greater risk of health care or reliability issues, but I wouldn't really know. Might be justifiable for hiring, but not retention in my view.