First Cellphone Use On Airplane Given OK

s31523 writes "With over 1 billion cell phone users worldwide, and with so many business travelers, using the cell phone on the airplane has been a recent hot topic. Emirate airlines is announcing they will give the OK for cell phone use on their planes, making them the first airline to do so. The FCC and FAA still ban the use, but are working to determine safety implications, if any."

Comments

To those confused

[MindStalker]

To those confused, the real problem with cell phone use on airplanes is that you are traveling so fast that you are switching towers once every minute or so. One person is fine, millions doing it (which is what would happen if legal) would be a HUGE strain on cell phone networks. Airlines are installing cellphone tower equipment into their plane to eliminate this problem.

That is all class.

Re:To those confused

[fdrebin]

The other problem will be ME going postal when the impolite person sitting next to me yaks and yaks for 5 hours straight on a flight.

OK, I won't have a firearm, but I am large, strong, and will have become extremely psychotic.

/F

Re:To those confused

[ari_j]

I was looking for your comment - I would have posted the same thing (maybe in a bit less friendly tone). There are already enough things on planes that piss me off without the addition of 200 people loudly asking "Can you hear me now?" for the entire flight. In a similar vein, I have started a practice of turning in all unattended bags in the gate area to airport security. Most unattended bags are left by annoying people in the first place, so having those people miss their flight because they failed to heed the repeated warnings about leaving their bags unattended has a positive effect on my flight. ;)

Re:To those confused

[Dun Malg]

you always get some jackass who talk at top volume on their mobiles for hours

Anyone ever figured out why people talk louder on cellphones? Are they actually talking louder, or is it just a perception we have? Is it because on of their ears isn't available to hear back their loud talking so they compensate? A J. Seinfeld would say, "What's the deal?"

Regular phones have what is called "sidetone", which is your own voice coming out your earpiece. This is the natural result of all parties on a landline communicating on the same circuit. This feedback mechanism essentially allows you to monitor your own volume level by letting you hear what the other person is hearing. Cell phones, on the other hand, do not have sidetone. Your outgoing voice and the other party's incoming voice are on two separate channels. Since people are not "trained" on the use of cell phones, and are even somewhat programmed by landline usage to expect sidetone, they exercise little control over their volume levels. Since the automatic reaction to not hearing your own voice clearly in a sidetone system is to speak louder, the ones that really shout into their cells are mindless morons who are allowing their programmed behavior on landline phones to happen on their cells.

Basically, it comes down to this: if they're speaking above a normal conversational tone on a cell, then they're unthinking fools who can't adjust to lack of sidetone because they're too stupid to realize it's not there. The world is full of unthinking fools.

Good news for Bose

[wbean]

Sounds like good news for Bose; there are going to be a lot of people buying those noise-cancelling earphones.

Keep the ban for the sake of quiet

[Retired Replicant]

I don't care if they determine that there is no need to ban cellphones because of interference with plane electronics -- I'd still rather the ban is kept anyway in order to keep flights from turning into cacophonous gab-fests. Flights are already uncomfortable and headache-inducing anyway...lets not make them noisy as well.

If flying wasn't bad enough

[tulmad]

Because if being crammed into coach wasn't bad enough, now you can be crammed into coach next to some asshat having a loud conversation on his phone for the entire flight. Sounds like a damn good time!

Health and safety issues

[ShadowEFX]

I hope one of the health and safety issues they look in to is the effect a cell phone has on a trachea when forcefully inserted by an enraged passenger tired of hearing the unfortunate cell user blather for five continuous hours...

Does it mean...

[ifchairscouldtalk]

... that I can play Snake on a plane now?

Issues are technical, not just regulatory

[bugnuts]

Let's ignore the issues of cellphones interfering with the flight controls. We'll ignore that search for a random cellphone on some oriental airline long ago, purported to be messing up the landing.

From what I understand, cellphones work by associating themselves with "cells" of coverage. The closer they are, the less power they use, and so on. When the user moves cells, the network switches them over to the new cell.

From the air, a cellphone will see many, many different cells as being equally good. It will also have to switch across cells much faster than normal. Without the plane itself acting as a roving cell tower for the occupants, it seems to me that this would cause a lot of problems. Not only will all the cellphones be transmitting at full power, but the network will potentially have to handle many many more switches cell to cell, and faster than normal. There's evidence of this from TFA when it said some upscale, long-haul airlines are installing equipment onboard that will allow for cell phone use.

I'd love to hear from anyone in the business that could shed more light on these technical issues, and whether they are as big of a problem as I suspect if airlines were to just say "Sure! Use your phone!"

Cellphones don't endanger planes.

[bananaendian]

This "Cellphones in Airplanes" type of article appears periodically in /. and every time I have to rise from my grave to correct the false speculation about cellphones interfering with avionics.

Cellphones do not cause aircraft to crash and burn! There. Thank you.

Here's my longer explanation for those interested: Avionics ABC

Airlines offering the use of GSM cellphone services equip the cabin with a basestation similar to one used RF-secure buildings and underground facilities. It will handle all the calls within the cabin and connect to the phone network via satellite datalink. It's all compatible, safe and tested method that has been used for years now on business jets.

Re:Counting down...

[Hoi Polloi]

I doubt it. After being readied by your pleasant trip through security where you begged for your insulin back, the comfort of flying with your knees crushed into the back of the seat in front of you while a kid kicks the back of your seat will sooth your troubled soul. And if that isn't enough you can eat your bag of pretzles (only on select flights) on your tiny tray. Then you can join the 10 person long line to the toilet only to get to the front in time to be ordered by the flight attendant to get back to the your seat because they'll be landing in 1 hour.

No, I see no passengers being bothered by this.

First you will hear this really stupid tune

[nephridium]

Then you will witness an endless flow of words that apparently just won't ebb down: "Yea, hello? Hello? Hello? Yea, can you hear me? Hello? Can you.. Yea. I can hear you. Yea, the reception is lousy. The reception. The RECEPTION. RECEPTION. Yea. Uh-huh. Yep. Yea, I'm in the airplane now. We can now make calls from the plane, ain't that great? Yea, we took off just a couple of minutes ago. We TOOK OFF. Yea, I'm actually calling you from the sky, I'm like god, except that I have a better ring tone [hysterical giggle]. Ah, nice we're getting dinner now [makes hand movement to stewardess (inquiring about his culinary preferences) indicating he's in an important conversation]. Yea. Yep. No, haven't eating for hours, it's great that they serve dinner now, I'm starving. How's the dog? [...]"

A man was brutally killed yesterday aboard flight AA322. Police reports indicate there was no connection to a terrorist plot. According to an eye witness "he was just a really, really annoying guy with a cell phone."

Not exactly news, but CNN thinks so

[eggboard]

Emirates said months ago that they were going to add this service, which uses an on-board picocell and relays calls very expensively very satellite. Should run at least US$2.50 per minute for calls. I wrote about this in The Economist back in September (not Emirates news): RyanAir will launch in-flight calling by the second half of 2007 on hundreds of its planes. That will be the first major deployment.