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Electronics & Planes Don't Mix?
dirtydamo writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running an interesting story on the old debate on whether electronic devices cause problems on planes. It appears pilots are pretty much accustomed to handling weird problems with equipment, which they attribute to passengers' portable devices. More research is needed to determine whether or not this is the actual problem, but the article certainly makes me a little uneasy about modern air travel."
Say I need more tinfoil on my hat, but I don't doubt for a moment that terrorists somewhere are looking at a way to have a "martyr" on a plane disrupt the controls from the cabin using electronics. No overt attack neccesary; he would flip a switch, sit back and look forward to his 70 virgins that Allah[0] will be handing over in a few minutes while the crew futiley scramble around until the inevitable crash.
[0] Just an example, Islam != terrorism.
Trolling is a art,
"You've got to ask, do you want to get there, or do you want to use your laptop?"
Both. It's a million dollar aircraft, and the ticket is expensive. Figure out how to make it safe. When they find themselves asking questions like this, how can they wonder why they're having a hard time making money?
Can't they insulate all the sensitive equipment from the passenger section? Maybe have a layer of lead between the cockpit and the rest of the plane?
If things are really that bad, they're going to have to do something to address this, and soon. They need to harden the equipment against interference, and do it NOW.
but the article certainly makes me a little uneasy about modern air travel
Why? The article says the pilots are used to it and know how to filter it out. Plane crashes are very rare, and the ones that do happen are nearly always related to either weather or non-electronic equipment failure.
I think their problem is a bit deeper than it seems...
I've always wondered why electronic equipment on planes was so much more sensitive then the regular stuff we have down on earth. I mean I can use my mobile phone near my computer and it doesn't lock up and vice versa, turning on my computer doesn't exactly make my mobile phone calls drop out. Electronic devices are specifically designed to withstand a certain amount of interferance, did somebody just forget to do that for plane electronics?
Just a note, airlines make money from people using in-flight phones, it's not in their economic interest to have people using their mobile phones.
Now, I know that not everything is as ideal a the FCC Part 15 rules are supposed to ensure, but really, do laptops really put out that much interference in the form of radio waves? How about mp3 players, or calculators, or e-book readers? I guess that what I'm wondering is how these devices are considered Part 15 if they wreak havoc upon aircraft electronics. Yes, I can see how an actual emitter, like a wireless ethernet device, a bluetooth device, or that sort could potentially manifest, but those devices, or their functionality within a larger unit could be fairly easily detected, requiring the passenger to disable the feature, or failing that, not use the equipment in flight.
Beyond that, if a Part 15 device is that big of a problem, perhaps the FCC should start testing things.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
... since the earliest days of aviation radio navigation aids. AM and FM broadcast receivers have oscillators in them that can be tiny transmitters. Depending on design, they can interfere with the VOR, localizer, glideslope and ADF navigation receivers.. and only a few feet away from their antennas. Add in the intentional transmitters on cellphones, the digital radiation from laptops with wireless links accidentally turned on close to the GPS and DME frequencies and there's reason to be concerned.
Or is this just more of the same: "don't use your cell phone on the plane, use the convinient onboard phones we've installed, or the terrorists win (because it cuts into the bottom line)"?
If you do not fix the problem at the root, you leave yourself open to other, possibly larger, problems.
Let's face it, airplanes generally last 30 years or more before they are retired. Now, I don't put too much stock in a bunch of non-engineer pilots blaming random problems, but if there are problems with these on-board systems and electronic interferance, they need to be fixed, because electronic devices are not going to become less scarce.
We routinely hear stories on the biomedical front about how embedded electrical devices are solving problems that traditional medicine couldn't, or didn't solve well. Since the Jarvis heart, biomedical devices have bee cropping up at an increasing pace. I don't think you can ask the guy with a life-sustaining device embedded in his body to turn it off for the flight.
Add to this wearable computer technology, RFID tags everywhere, smart consumables, etc., and it is very possible that in 30 years it won't be possible to just tell people to turn their devices off. If there is a problem, fix it. If there isn't, stop scaring people.
"No overt attack neccesary; he would flip a switch, sit back and look forward to his 70 virgins that Allah[0] will be handing over in a few minutes while the crew futiley scramble around until the inevitable crash."
If we design our aircraft so poorly as to not have any manual controls, then some re-evaluation needs to occur. There's a reason that we have trained pilots that go through fairly extensive training on a particular aircraft (and are certified on only the particular plan/cockpit configuration that they fly regularly), is because they are supposed to be experts in what they do. If an electronics bug can cause a plane to fall from the sky, then the electronics have way too much control over the flaps, engines, rudder, and ailerons, and even if the computer is capable of making adjustments, the plane should still be manually controllable. I mean, what if lightning strikes a plane in the exact wrong place and it manages to cook the onboard computers?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I have a horrible impression that the use by passengers of high tech equipment is coincident with higher sophistication in the avionics and that software bugs are being misinterpreted by flight crew.
See my journal, I write things there
How could a device like a Spellchecker possibly emit enough RF to interfere with avionics dozens of feet away? If the avionics were really that sensitive then planes would be crashing every time solar activity increases or lighting strikes within miles of the plane.
An airport near here in Roanoke requires a landing approach that takes the plane very close to a couple mountains, the tops of which are literally covered with antenna blasting high power RF across the entire radio spectrum. Yet miraculously that doesn't interfere with the avionics.
Just because the problem went away about the same time the passenger turned off their spellchecker does not prove that was the problem.
What concerns me the most is that these hundreds of problems have been chalked up to consumer devices, when it could be legitimate problems internal to the avionics. If the are simply written off to external causes then the real problems will not be corrected.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
We yuppies are busy and important people. We most certainly WILL be meeting those contacts in our PDA's!
Whats with all the anti-yuppie sentiment anyways? Previous generations busted their asses to send their kids to college so they could become successful young people and when their kids end up actually succeeding they're instantly hated? What gives?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
It's fairly common for them to ask you to turn off all electronic items including games and walkmen during take off and landing.
I expect they are just extra careful at those times because the closer to the ground (and other planes) you are the less margin for error there is.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
How come passing cell phone towers, HAM, satelites (GPS, etc.), cosmic rays, (... etc. ...) and even the cockpit systems themselves don't cause interference to the cockpit systems?
There's a million sources of radiation anywhere there exists modern inhabitation. How come these immensely powerful sources of radiation do not interfere with the aircraft but my CD player with 2AA batters can? And if a tiny electronic device running on two tiny batteries can disrupt an aircraft, how can it possibly be safe to fly? Doesn't that constitute a violation of FCC regulations? (Yes, I meant FCC.)
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When I pilot sees something weird with the instruments and blames it on a cell phone or PDA or something, that's really anecdotal. What I'd like to see is an interview with a cargo pilot. I mean, do pilots flying MD-11s for Fed Ex see these same little glitches? If so, I think it's safe to say it's not the passengers electronics causing the problems.
This one always pissed me off, if it's such a danger then WHY TRUST people to be capable of turning off their devices. Most people can't manage their devices anyway, they are NOT IN control of their electronics. Not such a biggie now but later on with fuel cell powered ultra wide band gadgets...
Uneasy, why? Flying in a plane is pretty much the safest way to travel. It is a LOT more dangerous to drive a car than it is to fly.
It appears pilots are pretty much accustomed to handling weird problems with equipment, which they attribute to passengers' portable devices.
And in World War II, pilots used to blame weird problems on gremlins. Lets get real: Pilots, the vast majority of whom have no background in, or understanding of, electronics, are blaming portable electronic devices for interfering with their instrumentation. They provide nothing but anecdotal evidence to support these claims.
If there is a problem, it should be documented by the pilots and the airlines, the FAA should get involved, and electronic engineers should be paid to conduct an investigation. I'll be concerned when studies run by engineers and scientists show that such problems exist and are being caused by personal electronics. Is there commonality between instruments that fail (e.g., GPS units manufacture by Trimble, fly-by-wire systems in Airbus planes, etc.) or in portable devices that generate interference (e.g., Nokia 6000 series cell phones, HP Pavilion ZE4400 series notebooks, etc.)? These are the kind of questions that need to be answered.
Flying is unpleasant enough without further, possibly unnecessary, restrictions to make it even more so. After standing in line until their legs ache, passengers are practically strip-searched without probable cause. Unskilled, ignorant baggage screeners insist that people have laptop computers X-rayed. The screener manhandle cameras, laptops, and cell phones. People are crammed into undersized, uncomfortable seats. Every few years they are told to replace their carry-on luggage with something smaller because the airlines have crammed even more seats into the planes.
I have no problem with you wanting to see scientific evidence. Until that time, you certainly won't mind if I continue to ask you to keep your devices off during takeoff and landings? You see, I want you to still be alive to see the results of that scientific research, and until I see evidence exonerating your devices, I would prefer you keep them off so I have one less thing to worry about while getting you to your destination. :)
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Gee, maybe someone should invent shielding for these wires and instruments. I mean, I know that's a difficult concept compared to everything else that goes into desighing an airplane...
Does Fedex's (or any other cargo carrier) fleet have the same problems? I'd seems reasonable that they would have the same cockpit instruments, but wouldn't have any passengers with equipment. So they should have almost zero problems with avionics, do they?
Has anyone looked at the back of most consumer electronics lately?
Most electronic devices comply with part 15 of FCC regulations, meaning they don't cause
harmful interference and they have to accept all harmful interference. I know for certain that a
Game Boy would be hurt more by the plane than the plane would be hurt by the Game Boy
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
This sort of failure is totatlly inexcusable. If your car went wacky when a cell phone was used near it, there would be mass recalls on the vehicle. Instead of banning the electronic devices, we should be fixing the friggin planes. Next thing you know, terrorists will be trying to determine how many cell phones it takes to crash a plane.
I've got a mind like a steel trap - it's got an animal's foot stuck in it.
Let us say for the sake of argument that the various in flight systems on a current passenger airplane are so sensitive to interference from inside the cabin that all non intentional radiators must be shut down including laptops, radio receivers of any kind, etc. What does this say about the safety of the plane in question when confronted with the multitude of broadcast transmitters outside the fuselage that are covering the entire electromagnetic spectrum with thousands and tens of thousands of watts and various intermodulation products everywhere? Is the outside shielding of an aircraft really good enough to knock those outside transmitters down below the levels required by the FCC for unintentional radiators?
Although our concerns with security have changed since 9/11, the threat of someone deliberately jamming aircraft systems using an intentional radiator from inside the airplane has always existed. If current aircraft can not deal with FCC class B and part 15 electronics, there is no way they are going to deal with a deliberate attack never mind one that is specifically designed to interfere with aircraft navigation, communication, and operation.
I have worked on many projects as an electronics engineer where RF interference considerations from licensed transmitters were major issues as well as our own non intentional RF emissions. I used to be an avid amateur radio T-Hunter/Hider in Southern California and have seen first hand what powerful transmitters can do as well as the unintentional interference poorly shielded equipment can cause to excessively sensitive electronics.
I am skeptical about this. I work in a hospital with "Do not use wireless phones in this facility" signs on all the doors. Yet, when I asked our BioMed guy about this he said that in order to actually have even a slight chance of causing interference of medical devices, one would have to place their cell phone very close to said "affected" equipment... and, again, even then, he called it a slight chance to cause interference.
Not that I'd test this theory myself... not in the hospital, let alone on a plane.
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:
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
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
AFAIK, Arabic did not exist as a language at the time of Mohammed. The prophet spoke Syraic.
The original Koran would have been recorded in the language of the prophet (in the legendary haphazard order). The Arabic Koran is a translation of this original document. AFAIK, the original Koran was lost. I could be wrong, of course.
The problem confronting the Koran in this context is the same as is faced by the readers of the Gospel of Thomas - the only extant version is in Coptic, which was a translation from Greek. Can an English translation be faithful to the original Greek? Christianity and Judism are both well acquainted with the perils of (mis)translation.
I read the Dawood translation of the Koran some years ago. The points made by Luxenberg, especially regarding the chilled versus boiling water, seem to be much more reasonable than what I saw printed. I would love to read an English translation of the German text.