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Cell Phones To Be Allowed On UK Planes
Matty the Monkey writes "The British regulator in charge of air travel has approved cellphones for use on airline flights, reports the BBC. Airlines will be allowed to activate base stations in the plane's tail after takeoff, creating a zone of mobile coverage around the plane. 'The services could stop working once aircraft leave European airspace. Initially, only second generation networks will be offered but growing interest would mean that third generation, or 3G, services would follow later, said Ofcom. The cost of making a mobile phone call from a plane will be higher than making one from the ground.'"
I once had the displeasure of sitting on a plane on the tarmac for two hours while our flight was delayed and the pilot allowed everyone to use their cell phones. It was torture as most folks were not talking on their cell phones to arrange transportation or take care of business, but they were talking (loudly) about everything and nothing and forcing those around them to have to listen! Even worse, people began trying to speak over one another and the volume gradually increased until there was an amazing din of people calling their friends to say "Hey! Hey! Betcha can't guess where I'm calling you from! An airplane! Ha ha ha ha, yeah and on my own cell phone even!". It was a horrible forced invasion of personal space and having to listen to someone blabber on and on "Like I know she does not like me because, like, she totally gave me a bitchy look yesterday and I was so like, peeved you know? because like, I think she is just so.... like not on top of it...... blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
I am waiting for the smashed phones and fist fights to start happening in response to this.
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Sales of noise-cancelling headphones suddenly rise...
Wonderful invention. Buy them by the box.
Deleted
>What if I use my cell phone and the plane is still on the ground?
from the summary....
>Airlines will be allowed to activate base stations in the plane's tail after takeoff...
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
as the pilots aren't making calls while flying. I don't want the last thing I hear is "Gotta go, about to crash"
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
Funny how all those 'cellphone calls' were made from planes above 3,000 feet on 9/11...
"Mom, this is Mark Bingham"...
According to the 9/11 commission people made cell phone calls from flight 93. How come they need extra equipment to make the calls now? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93#Phone_calls
(1) The extra base station costs money, and someone has to pay for it, after all I want to get paid for the work I've done on it don't I!
(2) The satellite bandwidth costs money.
(3) The extra infrastructure on the ground costs money.
And, last time I heard, the ground in most places is lower than 3,000m so if you use your phone on the ground what happens is that you'll be just as liable to prosecution as you are today.
Look mate, when there's a phone switched on in my plane I can hear it over the VHF radio - how do I know it's not also affecting the NAV radio (adjacent band) and making the VOR needle point the wrong way? - you can't hear that.
With all the paranoia at airports, you can't even get on a plane with a 120g tube of toothpaste. But somehow cellular phones are ok, even though we can supposedly crash the plane if we turn it on at the wrong time? Basically if there is a buck to be made, the authorities and airlines are surprisingly flexible.
Sooner or later someone will mention phone jammers, and a few posts later someone will counter with the fact that it might block a doctors phone.
This is the Godwin of mobile phone topics. Ok wait for it...
The real reason why cell phones are banned on planes has nothing to do with their interference with a planes navigation system. Think about it - if there was even a minimal chance that a cell phone could cause a crash of a commercial jet, no one would be allowed to bring one on board. The FAA has tests and will fail any wire not shielded to withstand such interference.
The real reason is that cell phone networks are based on a 2 dimensional system. Cell towers grant leases based on which tower has the strongest signal from a particular phone. When the user of the phone moves from one tower's coverage to another, the lease is transferred. If a plane full of people flew over a metropolitan area with 150 cell phones negotiating leases, chaos ensues as the system is not designed to support a 3 dimensional model. Newer networks are but the older ones will be problematic. I highly suspect the British trial will have a special base on the plane which will take all the leases so the ground towers will not be affected.
The last reason is annoyance. I actually used Skype on planes from Vancouver to Frankfurt equipped with Boeing's Connexion internet service. While the trial ended, it was clear that using Skype on an overnight commercial flight could cause a great deal of annoyance to passengers wanting to sleep. ON local flights, it might be acceptable for a few sociopaths to talk the entire time thus ensuring their fellow passengers have full details of their personal lives.
I personally think that it will be less than two days before we see a newspaper article about a cleaning crew finding a passenger duct taped to the planes toilet with a cell phone shoved up his hind side.
"Question everything, including this!" - http://technoracle.blogspot.com/
Wait, I'm so confused. I thought cell phones and other wireless devices emitted invisible pilot killing waves, so deadly that we must turn off all devices upon takeoff and landing, and put them into "pilot safe" mode when in flight?
I saw a documentary on it here:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/30
Oh, I guess that frequency-hopping signals really aren't that bad.
On the Tokyo airport bus, the announcement says:
"Passengers are reminded that portable telephones should not be used on the bus as they annoy the neighbors!"
... the number of mid-air fatal beatings of fellow passengers with in-flight meals is about to rise 5000%.
Phones. The latest in a series of moves designed to make traveling on a plane as excruciating as possible. Were I wearing a tinfoil hat I might even think it were a deliberate policy to discourage people from taking planes, in the name of terrorism or whatever this week's Reichstag fire is.
- First there's the awful journey in a car and the cost of parking in the long-term carpark (slightly cheaper than buying your own plane). Or a similar fee in any taxi, should you decide to leave your car at home.
- Next up is the confusing maze of finding your check-in point in a plastic ugly 60s monstrosity designed by the same blind architect who also does all the world's supermarket carparks.
- Then you wait in line to check-in. Usually behind a Mongolian rugby team, who all have visa issues, and who all want to ask very, very detailed questions about their seats.
- Then there's the security check. The hours of waiting, then the removing of shoes, belts, rings, laptops, false teeth, and god knows whatever else. This despite the fact that it's pretty easy to throttle a steward using the shoulder strap on your carry-on.
- Then you have to hang around for hours in the departure lounge (you arrived 3 hours early to beat the lines at security). You fill the time by buying bad coffee which costs about the same as 100 gallons of avation fuel. Tastes like it too.
- Then you get on the plane....
And now some fucker's gonna sit and phone for hours?Screw planes, I'm going by boat. It's probably quicker.
Better yet, what happens when two planes cross paths?
My guess is all calls get dropped; and those two planes don't make their scheduled arrival times.
The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. - William McDonough
Hang on - I thought phones and all electronic devices on planes were dangerous.
Or wait - perhaps we were being lied to all along? They're not dangerous, but in fact
perfectly safe.
Perhaps the biggest danger is people blocking isles not moving their legs when they are moving their lips. (no jokes please).
C.
I just read the other day that Qantas is going to do this on some flight is Australia, but they are restricting use to Messaging and Data use only, so NO CALLING, Yeah!!
The last thing you want on a Red-Eye flight to/from Perth etc is some numbskull blabbering on his phone.
However it will be just like international romaing so its probably going to cost an arm and a leg to use
Admiral Trigger Happy
I wouldn't mind idiots talking on their cell phones in-flight as long as they stepped outside to take the call.
And you base this statement on what exactly? I'm a test pilot and I am sick of hearing these erroneous arguments every time this subject comes up. Every time we put a new piece of gear in a plane, we have to go through about 3-4 weeks of EMI testing to verify that the new addition doesn't interfere with the electronics of the aircraft. Guess what... the guys in the E3 lab always find some detectable change. The chance of that device causing a fatal mishap is low... but what happens when you multiply that by hundreds or thousands? These devices are *not* tested in aircraft - it would be prohibitively expensive to test every mp3 player, cell phone and wireless modem with every aircraft configuration. Have you ever been on a telecon with someone that has a blackberry too close to a mic? Do you really want that interference stepping on a pilot's voice comm with ATC and establishing an incorrect altitude or having missing a TCAS call?
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
CAP 756 - Portable Electronic Device Generated Electromagnetic Fields on board a Large Transport Aeroplane
http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP756.PDF
CAA PAPER 2003/3 - Effects of Interference from Cellular Telephones on Aircraft Avionic Equipment
http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAPAP2003_03.PDF
Boeing Aero 10 - Interference From Electronic Devices
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_10/interfere.html
Still think banned cell phones have nothing to do with navagation interference?
Who is this Jimmy character, and why was he cracking corn in the first place?
My experience in Tokyo a few years ago concurs with yours. On the metro and underground trains a large proportion of passengers were using their phones, either for text or speech, but I was struck just how inconspicuously the phones were being used. Conversations were quiet and ringtones not too loud.
As an avid hater of loud mobile phone users, my belief that the whole mobile phone problem lies with people not the technology, was reinforced.