Bluetooth on an Airplane?

bblazer asks: "Since I travel quite a lot, I am very familiar with the warnings about cell phone use on an airplane (could be bunk, but I still respect it and those around me). But what about using Bluetooth? I just got off an Alaska Airlines flight where the flight attendant said that we were not permitted to use any device that sends or receives a radio signal. I often use the bluetooth features of my PowerBook and Treo while onboard a plane (you can have the Treo on without having the cell phone on), or I set up a mini-network with others I may be traveling with. Could Bluetooth cause any problems, or is this something I need not worry about?"

Comments

Maybe you've just been lucky...

[Banner]

As I said earlier, I used to work on the systems that are in use today. I am an industry expert. Yes the odds are against you causing a problem.

But it CAN happen.

The worst place for it to happen is when you're in the weather, flying on instruments, and the plane already has some kind of problem. Then you're going to crash and die. Or burn to death in the wreckage.

You can quote your own ancedotal evidence, but again, I used to test those systems for a living. I'd rather not put a million to one chance against the lives of a plane full of people, or myself.

Re:Yes it could cause problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding as to why you're not allowed to use cell phones on planes has to do with cell phone technology. When you're on the ground, you're only within broadcasting distance of one or two cell phone towers. But in the air, your phone can broadcast to hundreds of different towers. I'm not an expert in cell phone technology, but my understanding is that the signal would use tower resources from every tower within range.

Honestly, if a consumer wireless device can interfere with critical airplane functionality, we've got serious problems. It would be fairly trivial for a terrorist to boost the signal comming out of their cell phone or whatever was necessary to cause problems, yet we haven't seen anything like that.

Well.

[ColaMan]

I don't know about you, but I was on a flight out of Singapore once...

Casual Pilot: "Good evening everyone, we're ready to taxi, estimated flight time to Sydney is 8 hours, (blah ,blah, casual pilot chatter). Turn off all your cellphones for the duration of the flight, please."

Plane begins to taxi.

Plane abruptly stops taxiing.

Grumpy Pilot: "Whoever's using their cellphone, please turn it *off*. Crew, search the cabin."

After a pause of a few minutes, Plane begins taxiing again.

So, hell, maybe they've got a few blinkenlights that blink when someone's got the phone on. As for bluetooth, yes, the power is miniscule. But as a pilot, you'd be pissed off if the plane you're flying lost some crucial function, because of eg. an overload of some very sensitive preamp that happens to be in the roof just above some passenger using bluetooth.

So, I think they (and I!) would rather just leave the unknown variables out of the whole flying equation as much as possible, thanks very much.