Qantas Blames Wireless For Aircraft Incidents

musther writes "An Australian airline Qantas Airbus A330-300, suffered 'a sudden change of altitude' on Tuesday. "The mid-air incident resulted in injuries to 74 people, with 51 of them treated by three hospitals in Perth for fractures, lacerations and suspected spinal injuries when the flight bound from Singapore to Perth had a dramatic drop in altitude that hurled passengers around the cabin." Now it seems Qantas is seeking to blame interference from passenger electronics, and it's not the first time; 'In July, a passenger clicking on a wireless mouse mid-flight was blamed for causing a Qantas jet to be thrown off course.' Is there any precedent for wireless electronics interfering with aircraft systems? Interfering with navigation instruments is one thing, but causing changes in the 'elevator control system' — I would be quite worried if I thought the aircraft could be flown with a bluetooth mouse."

Comments

Re:I *hate* this discussion

[japhering]

Personally, I used to support PC-based ECG capture devices. I used to really like taking people who claimed their phone had no effect on medical devices, and taking them to stand in front of an ECG monitoring screen and *showing* them the effect on the traces that it had.

Which is a pretty damn crappy ECG platform. Hell, I can cause changes just by introduction of static electricity to a pc. First generation pulsar digital watches set off all sorts of alarms in hospitals.. guess what both the pulsar and the next generation of devices were significantly more shielded.

Each generation of airline electronics have become significantly more hardened and everytime there is even a suspected problem the rules tighten. While the airframes might be 20-30, even 80 years old (Southwest is not planning on retiring any of its 737s until age 80) the electronics get replace on average every 10 years.

The Quantas incident is nothing more than pilot error or incompetence

Re:Moral of the story?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any device irregardless of broadcast strength and frequency

Irregardless is NOT A FUCKING WORD. You're a moron.

Re:Moral of the story?

[Warshadow]

Another reason to keep devices off is so you're concentrating on the announcements that are made, if something goes wrong and everyone needs to get out. This applies in particular to any operations on or near the ground, but not as much while at flight level.

This and the ability to assert their control over you while you're in the airplane by telling you that you cannot do something is the real reason that electronics are required to be shut off during takeoff and landing.

The FAA may spout things about RF interference, but it's a crock and they know it.