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Research: Mobile Phones Disrupt Aircraft
threeturn writes "Another contribution to the ever-popular "mobiles on planes" topic. Every time this is discussed on /. lots of people say "there is no danger - its just the airlines trying to make a buck on their skyphones". Well, now the UK Civil Aviation Authority has done some research which shows mobiles on planes do disrupt safety systems and interfere with compass readings and other navigation equipment. Also reported by the BBC. So do us all a favour and switch your mobiles off next time you fly."
I'd REALLY REALLY REALLY like to see Boeing, Airbus et al. installing avionics and comms systems that can't be disrupted by ubiquitous and nearly free techno-gadgets.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
um, on the point of it being a plot to make you use their expensive sky phones...
would one even get reception up there? not only up there - but in there (metal cylinder)?
If airplanes are already sensitive to the not so dramatic electromagnetic impact of simple little mobil phones, what would that mean to somebody who in act of terrorism wants to make strong em. impact on purpose?
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Exactly. A friend of mine who is a pilot, has forgotten to turn his off a few times when he goes flying. His battery is just about gone after only an hour in the air.
No problems getting reception up to 3000 ft, but you get LOTS of extra transmissions switching from tower to tower.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I used to be firmly against the interference argument - until one day at work I heard my hardline phone making all kinds of weird buzzings and beepings. Oddly enough, they sounded identical to the noise I occasionally get on my cell phone. The cell phone, not surprisingly, was sitting right next to my hardline phone. After moving my cell to various positions, I discovered that it does indeed interfere with my hardline phone. When I moved the cell away the periodic noises stopped, and when I placed it next to the phone the noises began again.
Now, I seriously doubt my phone operates anywhere near the band that my cell uses, but for some reason the cell manages to interfere. Based on the outcome of this little experiment, I would definitely believe that cells could interfere with other systems - including aircraft systems - even though it may seem counterintuitive.
Imagine the area of towers you could hit at 30,000ft in the sky.
not many at all.
First Cell site antenna array's are high gain and therefore squeeze the signal to the horizon, second they tilt the antennas downward to limit the cell sites coverage in regards to adjacent cell sites.
It amazes me how many times this comes up on cellphone doscussions and how suprising it is to find how many people have no clue as to the basics of how a cellsite operates.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
When I was working on wireless tech, and had to sit on industry consortium meetings on various initiatives for this type of stuff. One idea that was being passed around was to have an access point on the aircraft that would broadcast a 'forbidden' command to all the wireless devices which would tell them to play nice. iow - the plane would be a 'forbidden zone' where the device would know that it was not allowed to broadcast certain signals. IR would be okay, but bluetooth, 802.11[abg], cell phones, etc. would be right out. This could also be used in signal sensitive places like hospitals, etc.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
Not only that, but have you ever sat next to some schmuck who feels he has make a call as soon as the wheels hit the ground? And we're not talking some urgent business communication - it's more like "yeah, we just landed... I think I'll grab a burger and be there in an hour... yada yada yada..."
I say, install automatic detection systems for wireless devices, identify the location of the phone and put it on the screen for all passengers to see. Let them then decide what to do about it - I think after a few blanket parties the message will get around!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
at least according to the bbc article.
...
It found evidence that calls produced interference levels which could disrupt aircraft systems. Faults that could be attributed to mobile phones use include
I see a lot of "coulds" and not a single "did". So what they found was that they have no better information now than they did before. Did they observe a single instance where there was interference? It's seems highly dubious that they couldn't construct a scenerio where they could conclusively show this "error".
And it's been stated before but I think it's worth mentioning again. By god, if cell phones are really capable of such chaos, why on earth do they allow them on the planes to begin with? Just what I need is to have someone bring down my plane because they forgot their phone was on in their briefcase, or 6 members of some terrorist org only need to start sms'ing each other to take down a 747 full of people. There is a severe disconnect between what the FAA is claiming and their actions taken. What, I have 5 people make sure I don't bring finger nail clippers onto the plane, but no one cares that I can bring the entire thing down with my Nokia?
Taking the article at face value, which I do, cellphone use really is a hazard. But simply asking people to turn of their cell phones probably isn't good enough.
I'm perfectly cooperative, but on my last plane flight I had put my cell phone in my backpack, put the backpack in the overhead luggage, honestly thought it was turned off, and after landing discovered I had left it turned on.
What does a cell phone do when it's powered on but not being used to make or receive calls? Does it transmit occasionally and spontaneously?
So the next question is: without suggesting any draconian measures, is there any good way that flight staff can _detect_ that there's a powered-up cell phone on board--so that they can politely tell the flyer to turn it off?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I got a letter from Orange once, complaining about my phone jamming six adjacent cells (two cells that normally can't see each other suddenly both get the same phone at the same time). This was from having my phone switched on in an aircraft at around 3,500 feet.
Fine, so cell phones really do disrupt airplanes. I still don't believe it, but, if it's true then we've identified an exploit that needs to be fixed. "Please turn off your cellphone" is not a fix.
"Software company X has identified a buffer overflow in our popular Y software, which can lead to a remote root exploit. Rather than fixing it, we're asking that you please don't connect to port yz and send a string that is 5000 characters long and ends with the binary sequence..."
Moronic. Fix the bug and quit boring us with the details.
Michael
Do you have ESP?
It would be interesting to find out. In the US, with the advent of Air Marshals, even the smallest infractions are now enforced (a man was tackled and arrested by the Air Marshals for *wanting* to go to the bathroom while the seat belt sign was on. He had asked the flight attendant repeatedly to let him go, but never actually went...) The Article, which no one reads, talks about a man being sentenced to 12 months in prison in the UK for having his cell phone on (and not using it) during a flight.
I am annoyed to find out, however, that the whole thing is bogus. Once again "journalists" (what passes for them these days) misreport findings in an uncited study that was flawed in the first place. The study *did not* find that cell phones disrupt flights. They did not even use cell phones for their tests. So the science behind this simply is not there.
This is my experience with (accidentally!) left on mobile phones (GSM variety) in aircraft.
I fly light aircraft. On a dark, rainy night, a friend and I was approaching Ronaldsway. My friend was the 'handling pilot' (i.e. the guy who's waggling the stick), and I was in charge of the radios - setting up frequencies, identing navaids, talking to ATC etc. Although our aircraft (a Grumman Cheetah) only requires one aircraft, we fly together reasonably often and find this arrangement works very well.
My friend was at the time a very new instrument pilot. Ceilings (the bases of the clouds) were about 800 feet, winds were light, and it was pelting with rain. It was about an hour after sunset.
We were just intercepting the localiser (the horizontal guidance part of the ILS - instrument landing system), and we had been cleared for the ILS approach.
Suddenly, the radio was blotted out with:
'Bip-b b b bip b b bip b b bip b b bip' - the highly recognisable radio interference from a GSM phone. My friend had forgotten to switch it off when we had taken off an hour and a half earlier. His wife was phoning him.
It completely blotted out the COM radio with the extremely loud 'Bip-b b bip b b bip bzzzzzzzzzzzz' noise as the phone went off. However, it did not intefere with the nav radios nor the compass - the localiser needle continued to behave how it should have, as did the other instruments (the direction indicator, for example, is gyroscopic) and it did not affect the compass. However, the noise was extremely distracting, and if ATC had any further instructions, we had no chance of hearing them until we got the phone shut off or my friend's wife hung up.
Fortunately, with two of us on board, it was a non-event (I could fly whilst my friend turned the phone off).
An important point to remember: aircraft fly on the rules of Bernoulli and Newton, not the rules of Marconi! It's perfectly possible to fly without radios. The problem is in instrument conditions (i.e. in the clouds) where you can't navigate by looking out the windows. Even so, a prudent pilot always plans an 'out' in case of radio failure, and does not bet their lives on the continued operation of the com and nav radios!
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