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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."
Just the other week we had the article on Slashdot about cell phones not working in planes.
And, after all, what's the big rush?
Planes are generally quiet places, where you can lie back, enjoy some wine, watch a movie in the front of your seat, have a wonderfully cooked meal.
I can even recline horizontally if I so choose.
What need do you have for electronics on that? I don't want a pager or a beeper or a celly going off in the middle of the air! Not to disturb my solitude!
And another thing, let's get rid of all these damn kids with gameboys.
The only actual research I'm aware of on this is an FAA study from the '90s. This article is a good summary: Cell phone use isn't banned by the FAA, but by the FCC in 1991, citing "cell phones' potential to interfere with ground-to-ground cellular transmission." Another web site explains, "at altitude, a cell phone will light up multiple cell towers and may cause the system to lock up." BS? The FAA is going to do another study and they don't seem too worried about "locking up the system."
Why not test the device on the ground if the passenger wishes to use it in the air? Busy types will pay a premium for equipment certified to be safe and allowed for aircraft use.
Kids today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. - Socrates 400 BC
consumer electronic devices can cause problems with an aircraftssensitive equipment, couldn't it also be the possiblity that the planes own electronics are causing sporadic problems? Why the hell is suddley my game boy that caused the plane to crash, just because they don't have any other explanation.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
Crude EM disruption devices are trival to build. It's one of the basic lessons in the Radio Shack Electronics sets they used to sell with springs and wires for each component in a fairly hardy box. Of course, the set used a relay to create a spark gap, then it just needed a little amplification. A spark gap would be unwieldy and make a lot of noise, but it's an easy leap to a solid state device.
Odd electronics should not be allowed as a carry on. They should go in a shielded luggage compartment, or be required to be in a shielded case to prevent such attempts.
Speaking of which, in 1996 when TWA800 went down I was going out of La Guardia the next morning. I figured it would be real fun, so I showed up hours early. I arrived to see three times the number of normal baggage handlers, and they all have shiney black shoes. There are "new" check in computers being manned by the shiney black shoe folks and it's taking over an hour to get "checked" in per person. They are really giving me a hassle, when all of a sudden a hand signal is given and the baggage handlers form a circle around a confused fellow holding a brief case. The biggest "baggage" handler says, "Drop the briefcase", followed by, "Sir, what is in the brief case?"
Then four of the handlers drop in a group and open the case and begin looking at it's contents. It's got four shiny cylinders, a lot of wiring attached to what appears to be a timer. The gentleman begins stammering. They baggage handlers repeat over and over, louder and louder, "SIR WHAT IS THIS THING!?".
As he continues to stammer, I lean over and say, "Sales pitch; make it a good one."
Something clicks in his addled brain and he begins to recite his canned pitch about plastic injection molds. I was relieved, as were several of the baggage handlers as he smoothly attempted to sell us plastic injection molds and controllers. He was led off quietly for further, "inspection".
That was a hair raising experience.
Actually, it may not just be money and the aviation industry, I suspect there is also an issue with the herd "I've been told, but did not question" mentality too. I walked into a hospital reception recently while finishing off a mobile phone call, fully intending to switch it off while actually visiting. I was asked to finish my call outside by a nurse with a mobile phone clipped to her belt, it was switched on and presumably there to receive calls. When I raised this it transpired that it was "hospital issue and therefore OK", yeah, right, whatever...
OK, that's two points, but can you even have two cru... WTF is the plural of "crux" anyway, which I guess answers *that* question. ;)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
The IEEE had a very interesting article in Spectrum magazine 7 years ago on the issue of portable electronics and flight safety. As megahertz/gigahertz ratings increase for computing devices, this should only get worse (maybe until it gets to the point where computing is beyond "normal" RF?)
The conclusion was that there is little doubt about the interference and it is not just cell phones. The article relates an incident when too many people listening to the radio (there was some "important" sports match going on) did cause noticeable interference. It seems that in most cases the pilot can notice that some instruments are providing inaccurate readings (thanks to having redundant information around, different instruments would be affected differently) and it doesn't become a big problem.
So, by using your high-frequency electronic devices inside the plane you're making the pilot's job more difficult. During cruise flight it may be less risky and during takeoff and landing it is definitely not recommended. Personally I wouldn't even trust that much those skyphones. I'd rather err on the safe side. Read a book!
I read some theory about the actual plane itself (i.e being a long metal tube) not helping with interference. Busses and trains are also long metal tubes, you can use your gps unit, your mobile, your bluetooth and wi-fi notebook and your cd player all at once in bus, car, or train with out them interfering with each-other. I was always suspicious about airline electronics policies, i guess 10 years ago they were just being as safe as they could which is fine, but now days people really need to use their gadgets so its more in the airlines interests to find out exactly whats going on and try and fix it.
Maybe its because most airliners are quite old and the avionics engineers came up with strange and un-regulated ways of doing things eg "lets send the engine temperature in analog down unsheilded line multiplexed with all the other temperatures at various random frequencies" i could see why that would cause problems.
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As you can see here.
The problem isn't with the aircraft designers. They are designing a complex system to safely transport people. They do shield everything in the sircraft. The problem is with poorly designed personal electronics designed by yahoos who think emissions are just some lame FCC rule they barely think about. The "fix" will not be from Boeing and Airbus. It's going to come from the FAA and FCC combined. They'll tighten up the restrictions on stray emissions, and then they'll probably make a list of devices that can not be allowed. The aircraft people make a very good product. If anything needs to be "fixed" it's the poorly designed products from the personal electronics industry. You can add 2 tons of useless shielding to an aircraft (which still won't quiet all the noise) or you can add a few ounces to each device. I'm in favor of the latter.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
I agree that it's sketchy. The problem is variation. I have sat in the cockpit of a Cessna 206 with GPS and had my friend try out his new headset with cellphone attachment. The magnetic compass wasn't affected, but the gyro and autopilot both started turning the plane about 3 degrees from the set course. This shouldn't have happened, but it did. I have used my own phone a few times with no affect on the insturments at all.
The problem is that with thousands of different phones from Nokia, Motorola, et al, and with the varying emissions from hundreds of different laptops, it is impossible to determine what is the single causal item in the cabin. For now, I just have everyone in the cabin turn off their goodies whenever I'm landing for safety, especially if it's an ILS approach!
I can't understand the sentiment we are seeing from a few that say LET ME USE my device until you can find conclusive evidence that MY device is causing the problem. Frankly, I want to land alive, and I don't have time to chack every device. Until a better solution is found, I will continue to ban all devices in my cabin at least.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
One of my good friends is a pilot for a major airline. He flies the transatlantic route to several points. Recently, we went to the Apple store near my home and he bought an iPod for him to be able to listen to his music on the flight.
I asked him if it would interfere at all with the electronics of the aircraft since it was a fly-by-wire. He said there would be no problem and that he routinely used his laptop in the cockpit without realizing the WiFi card was in and on...transmitting and receiving (nothing since no WAP was available). The reason he wanted the iPod was so he could leave the big bulky laptop packed away and have only the "deck of cards" sized music player to listen to his tunes.
He did note that his aircraft is fairly new and they were built with the thought of the possible interference and that if he were to be flying an old 737 from waaaaaaaaaaaaay back when, it was possible it might somehow interfere, but that cases like that were very rare. He said anything built since the late 70s should be able to handle the typical interference which might show up in the electronics.
Plant a tree in a developing country.
Maybe flight 93 didn't crash because the passengers fought the terrorists, it was the rest of the passengers using their cell phones.
But in reality, I have also been unable to find any scientific study about personal electronics and airline instruments / communications.
I would want to see the following questions answered: how I can use my "FCC home or office approved" device without causing any problems (the houses in my neighborhood are right up next to one another), but my iPod can somehow make an altimeter or compass screw up if I go a few kilometers above sea level? Are the airlines telling me that my Mac and neighbors' phones are better built than their jet cockpits?
Presuming that a laptop or cell phone can interfere with airplane cockpits, why can it not be detected from the cockpit? ("We've detected that personal electronics are on, and we won't take off until they're all off.") On the other hand, they cannot even detect a bomb in their luggage hold. If you cannot detect a signal from a gameboy, how can the device interfere with the plane?
It seems to me that it should be fairly simple (if not cheap) to find a correlation (or even cause-and-effect), then figure out a way to either enforce the ban, or shield the cabins and pass the cost onto the passengers.
Or, laptop makers could offer more expensive shielded models that will not be detected by, or interfere with, airplane instruments. Again, maybe some actual scientists could take a crack at proving this hypothesis first.
Now, let's talk about the unwillingness or airlines and governments to protect commercial planes against shoulder-launched missiles...
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.