Personal Electronics May Indeed Disrupt Avionics

mattrwilliams writes "There is a growing body of anecdotal evidence that points to personal electronics being a real issue on board planes. Dave Carson of Boeing, the co-chair of a federal advisory committee that investigated the problem of electronic interference from portable devices, says that PEDs radiate signals that can hit and disrupt highly sensitive electronic sensors hidden in the plane's passenger area, including those for an instrument landing system used in bad weather."

Comments

Re:...really?

[Wyatt Earp]

Have you seen how heavily shielded the cables and connections for PDAs and other PEDs are in US military aircraft?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:E-8_crewmembers.JPG

Thats what you need to keep avionics from being disrupted and vice versa according to the DoD, they've done a lot of testing on that stuff over the last 30 years.

C'mon...

[jra]

ILS receiver antennas aren't "hidden inside the passenger compartment".

They're "attached to the outside of the friggin airframe".

Any story that gets the details that wrong, that fast, receives no credence at all. And if airplanes are having this much trouble with my 2mw iPad, what the *hell* are they doing about getting hit by 2GW of lightning?

(And don't tell me "Faraday cage"; that protects the occupants, but not necessarily the things connected to antennas outside the cage.)

Re:C'mon...

[couchslug]

I'm not impressed by the story itself, but do note that ILS testers are operated from INSIDE the aircraft. I've done plenty of ILS ops checks as a Comm/Nav weenie in the USAF.

The airframe doesn't block the signal enough to matter.

Since my being entertained in-flight is of no importance, I leave my electronic gear off when flying and sleep/nap through the trip.

Re:...really?

[gstoddart]

This is what I don't understand. With all the discussions over this, how has this not been fully tested and answered? How can we not have a definitive answer by now? And if it has been answered, why it is still being debated?

Because .. testing every possible consumer electronics device which might end up on an aircraft, against all the possible aircraft, and all of the possible variations of an aircraft is damned near impossible.

Some aircraft have been in production for a long time (I think over 40 years for the 747). It's got a whole boatload of variations, and has been tweaked, updated, and re-arranged by different carriers over the years. It's got different generations of avionics, in-flight systems, entertainment systems ... and who knows what else. I've seen the inside of a 747 when it was stripped down to an empty shell ... it's got literally miles of wiring.

Now, think about all of the different models of aircraft in the world. You would need to test 'em all.

I get the impression to be able to definitively say that no aircraft could ever be affected by this, you'd need to do testing of every possible emission from the device to coincide with every possible state of the aircraft ... and some of those interferences might be intermittent or not 100% repeatable, or might be compounded by other factors they can't anticipate.

I don't think anybody has the resources to rule it out ... so they've erred on the side of safety. The sheer cost of trying to test this extensively would be enormous.

And, really, unlike the pharma industry which waits until you can prove that something is causing harm before they pull it, the airline industry is waiting for proof that it doesn't cause harm before they allow it.

Re:...really?

[WillAdams]

Actually, that's more about meeting TEMPEST requirements so as to not emit a signal from which an enemy can derive useful information. Hardening of the avionics is a different thing, and not something one will readily find an image of.

William