The Real Reasons Phones Are Kept Off Planes

jcatcw writes "Mike Elgan argues that the the real reason that cell phones calls are not allowed is fear of crowd control problems if calls are allowed during flight. Also, the airlines like keeping passengers ignorant about ground conditions. The two public reasons, interference with other systems, could easily be tested, but neither the FAA nor the FCC manage to do such testing."

Comments

funny

[minus_273]

this is funny because he missed the obvious and actual reason. most planes ive flown on have had a phone on the arm rest with a little slot to swipe your credit card.

Re:funny

[Mononoke]

Actually, ask anyone that knows how cell towers work, and your real explanation would become evident.

Exactly. Every other explanation and excuse is crap. Unfortunately, solid technical reasons are never enough for most folks.

Re:funny

[Kizeh]

To certify every cell phone to be safe in flight would require a lot of study and creating new standards, restricting the design criteria of avionics and testing of every possible cell phone model. That could be pretty darn expensive.

Not to mention that we live in a global world; how do you certify that a Chinese passenger's Chinese cell phone doesn't interfere with a Russian plane's avionics flying into the US? Getting everyone on the planet to agree to these things is a pretty impressive challenge.

Re:funny

[arivanov]

The truth is that:

1. Old airbus models had severe interference problems from old pre-GSM cellular network phones. That has been confirmed many times. I have seen that myself in the early 90-es.
2. No test has ever proven any GSM phone to interfere with plane equipment (do not care about the US ragtag of network spagetty).
3. A modern GSM base station (and EU style 3G node B) is small enough to be put on a plane. If there is a local BTS it can enforce power control criteria on any phone which it camps on. Further to this, there is at least one reject code which will shutdown and lock up a phone solid with its radio off (only really old Samsungs violate the spec and reboot, rest follows it). So having phone support and local kit on the planes is actually beneficial as it allows airlines to ensure that "interfering" mobiles are powered down to their lowest possible transmit power or are outright off.
4. The commercial reason for not having mobiles on planes is easily resolved once again by putting basestations and the airline entering into a special roaming agreement with an operator. Plenty of Timbuktu GSM operators to do so, some are actively looking into entering these partnerships. Once again - the US ragtag of cellular non-standard networks is the loser. The airline skims a portion of an outright exorbitant roaming fee and everyone is a happy camper. There is a number of airlines that already have the kit in place and/or are testing it. There are also more than one company producing these as well.

So it all boils down to crowd control and to the airline ensuring that it does not end up on the receiving end of a lot of angry customers who have just received a 90$+ phone bill for a 10 minute call from the inlaw while on the plane.

This and the fear of "organised terrorists". Not that it is possible as the current generation of kit will run any voice channels all the way to the ground and back for an in-plane call. As a result anyone trying to organise a "terrorist attack" will simply fail as the plane will run out of channels to the ground right away. This is also the reason why the producers of this type of kit keep targeting the plane market and not the much more lucrative cruise ship and ferry market. A cruise ship is not subject to stupid FAA restrictions, but it has a disproportionately large proportion of local calls (where are you, I am in bar on level 7, ok, I am on level 3).

Re:funny

[billcopc]

Cell phones are cheap, noisy chinese devices. The fact that my bigass car stereo goes "ba-ba-buzz-ba-ba-buzz" whenever the phone rings is more than enough proof for me. If the cell's nasty op-amp interference can penetrate all my carefully installed uber-shielded stereo equipment and wiring, then I wouldn't be surprised if it messed with flight sensors and other twitch-sensitive gadgetry.

Fears aside, I actually like not having cell phones in a plane. For one, I hate phones. Two, I hate people who spend their whole life on a phone. Three, flights are long and boring, perfect for a nice little nap. If a dozen powersuit assholes are having a phone conference in a plane, I'll be turning into a spontaneous terrorist. I don't care if I have to beat them to death with a pillow, whatever it takes to shut them up. It's already enough of a nuisance that people treat coffee shops like their own personal office these days... a guy can't have a frickin' macchiato and enjoy a book anymore with these loud pompous market-slaves invading every quiet space on this bubble.

Easily Tested?

[kannibal_klown]

It might be easy in theory, but you need to think of scale. Take all of the cellphone manufacturers, during the course of a year a lot of cellphones are released. So each year you have a lot of cellphones to test. Then, the test itself isn't so clear-cut. Sure, that 1-year-old 737 might run fine, but what about the 7-year-old 737? It might have less around the electronics, or casual wear-and-tear might have left an opening. Put both factors together, and testing isn't so easy. Sure, it's possible but is it really worth the effort?

Re:Vapidity all round

[sholden]

If we use cellphones, then TEH TERRORISTS HAVE WON!!!!11!!eleven!!

Congratulations on coming up with the exact opposite meaning to the one that the statement obviously is supposed to convey.

And on Page 2, the real real reason

[user24]

Crowd Control? People getting annoyed at other people using cellphones? Perhaps historically, but look at page 2:

 

"However, the airlines know that some kind of plane-to-ground communication is coming, and they want to profit from it ... Airlines would prefer that phones be banned while they come up with new ways to charge for communication, such as the coming wave of Wi-Fi access"

Bingo!

however:
 

"So the ban remains in place because the government can't seem to come up with definitive answers."

you know, I'd rather the government (of whichever country) err on the side of caution, actually: "Well, we can't tell whether cellphones might cause crashes, so we'll just allow them and see what happens"?

Bottom line for me: people are annoying with cellphones. Now imagine sitting next to the guy talking shite for all 12 hours of a long haul flight. I'd hijack the plane just to shut him up. Keep the ban, people can surely live without cellphones for the duration of a flight... surely?

Billions and billions

[Aeonite]

If gadgets can't crash planes, then the ban is costing billions of hours per year of lost productivity by business people who want to work in flight.

What the author completely fails to address is the noise that ensues if you have ten businesspeople in first class all "doing business" on a cell phone at the same time. Are they supposed to wander the aisles and pace as they talk? Or merely talk over one another in increasingly loud voices?

There's something about a long tube that seems to suggest to people that maybe conversation should be kept to a minimum. Not only planes, but buses and subways and trains too. In my experience riding public transit, most people do not chatter on their phones endlessly. In part, I think, because there's an unconscious realization that the guy standing 6 inches away (that you can't move away from) does not want or need to hear your prattle.

Re:Billions and billions

[cowscows]

It's not an unconscious realization, it's common freakin' curtesy. But out of the thousands of people who fly each day, there's still going to be hundreds of ignorant assholes who are either too self-absorbed to realize, or to selfish to care. Flying is already an intense and intimidating experience for many people, long flights are generally uncomfortable and borderline miserable. Ever ride on a plane with a baby in a nearby seat? That can be annoying as all hell, but babies cry, they can't know any better, and so I deal with it. But if someone was talking loudly on their cell phone for a half hour, subjecting everyone around them to half of their conversation, I just don't know if I could take it.

As for billions in lost productivity (that number sounds rather high to me) because of people flying, big freakin' deal. Businesses have existed for thousands of years without cell phones, a few hours disconnected here and there won't put our economy into a recession.

Cell hopping?

[growse]

I was always under the impression that a mobile phone travelling at 500+ mph on a plane would be hopping from network cell to cell fairly regularly (once every few seconds?). This sort of frequent handover would then a) make it difficult to make, receive and conduct a call and b) cause issues for the phone networks if you've got num_people_per_plane * num_planes_in_sky_over_country people's phones all doing the same hops fairly regularly. Meh.

Not easily tested at all

[G4from128k]

It's worse than just the combinations of phones and planes. An aircraft makes a nice enclosed resonant space for cell signals to bounce around inside. Anyone who has looked at simulating or measuring RF fields would know that the field strength can vary by orders of magnitude depending on the exact location, orientation, and frequencies of the emitter and the exact orientation and location of the susceptible wiring or instrument. A tall person sitting in seat 6B with a CDMA phone may cause no problems, but a short person with a GSM phone in seat 32F could interfere with the automatic landing system. The field strength won't necessarily drop with distance inside the plane and may be focused to high levels anywhere inside the aluminum tube.

And testing individual phones isn't sufficient. What happens when 100 people all use their phones at the same time.

Re:Vapidity all round

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously never heard about this. I believe this level of fear and response would be greatly increased if people were hearing stuff from the ground or using it for web surfing. The idea is that it would give people a lot of people information that might cause panic, and a mass panic on an airplane is not exactly a good place to have one.

Also, this fear the web thing is a bit over-stated on your part, considering some planes are going to begin having internet access, which short of shoots down the entire argument of this guy. There is far more information available via the internet then in any phone call. I think the real reason is they do not want to have any people chattering away and people complaining about them talking too loudly.

As for your terrorists comment, you simply ignore what the author is trying to say. He is saying this lack of wireless devices on airplanes is bullshit, because if they would take down planes, terrorists would have tested every device possible to try to interfere with equipment and see if you cannot bring a plane to the ground. You really should spend less time at Digg.

probably ineffective anyway...

[jpellino]

IIRC a cell tower covers a geographic area of 36 sq mi, and assuming that's a circle (I know they effectively chart them as hexagons, but...) if that's true, the radius, given pi r ^2 for area, sqrt(36/pi) = 3.64 miles. That's only 19,000 ft. Sure, straight line would be better than terrestrial terrain, but above 19,000 you're heading out of range anyway, not to mention rapidly switching cells (400 mph = 6+ mi/sec)

If that were the case, it'd be torches and pitchforks for the cellcos if they allow it and then it sucks.