Time to Review FAA Gadget Policies

Nick Bilton, Lead Technology writer for The New York Times Bits Blog, called the FAA to complain about its gadget policies on flights and got an unexpected reply. Laura J. Brown, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs, said that it might be time to change some of those policies and promised they'd take a “fresh look” at the use of personal electronics on planes. From the article: "Yes, you read that correctly. The F.A.A., which in the past has essentially said, 'No, because I said so,' is going to explore testing e-readers, tablets and certain other gadgets on planes. The last time this testing was done was 2006, long before iPads and most e-readers existed. (The bad, or good, news: The F.A.A. doesn’t yet want to include the 150 million smartphones in this revision.)"

Comments

Familiar territory

[Virtucon]

I've been involved in this for a long time, including the Supplemental Type Certification and FAA processes to get WiFi on aircraft. Most of what happens to get you to turn them off during takeoff and landing has little to do with interference, it's to get your attention and to get you to follow directions. All of that is really important to your safety more-so than a nudeo-scan 5000 operated by the TSA. The other aspects such as Cellular Phone use during flights also isn't a technical risk to the aircraft but the annoyance factor to other passengers as well as coordination possibilities for terrorist activities.. Think "Ackbar we're over Chicago, what do I do?" That's why the damn in-flight position tracking on larger aircraft suddenly turns off when you're close to arrival. Some of this is a bit silly because we've allowed WiFi on planes and you can log into flight tracker or use the GOGO website to track where you are. The safety feature there is that it shuts off below 10,000 feet automatically and there's always a breaker in the cockpit that the pilots can use to shut it off.

If the FAA wants to review this then great but there's a lot more to it than just "possible" interference with aircraft systems and I don't expect that the airlines will open up the floodgates and let you use anything you want, when you want either just because of the annoyance issues.

Re:About time common sense prevailed!

[Spy Handler]

Nobody said electronic devices can "bring down" a plane. The issue has always been interference with a plane's navigation system. There have been documented cases where a jetliner mysteriously lost function in electronic systems, only to regain it after the flight crew went around turning off everyone's electronic gadgets. Some of them can emit quite a bit of RF.

The other side of the story

[chrb]

"Earlier this year, aviation journalist Christine Negroni obtained a copy of a confidential report from the International Air Transport Association that indicated the use of personal electronics on commercial aircraft had interfered with flight deck operations in 75 instances over the past seven years.

What kind of problems? I’m not sure you want to know. All cockpit systems were affected, flight controls, communication, navigation and emergency warnings. . . .

And

The use of PEDs [Personal Electronic Devices. –DS] on board will not – I repeat – will not cause a plane to go tumbling through the sky like something in a made-for-TV-disaster movie. What PEDs can and in fact have already done, is create a distraction for the flight crew. When that distraction comes at the wrong time it can lead to pants-wetting episodes and maybe even disaster. And that is why boys and girls, devices are supposed to be turned off as in OFF, below 10 thousand feet. The concept is that with sufficient altitude below us there is time to address any pesky error messages that might wind up being transmitted to the cockpit. Only now we know that those messages are pretty darn common."

Handhelds on Airplanes a Bigger Problem Than You Think

Re:The other side of the story

[WrecklessSandwich]

Agreed, retrofitting is less than practical in this case. However, this should have been happening with new designs at least since cell phones have been prevalent.

Re:The other side of the story

[MacGyver2210]

You're referring to a blogger, who admittedly also wrote a piece for the NYT, but she is basing all of this on a "confidential" report by a public safety agency(FOIA request anyone?) and 10 anonymous tips to a website.

While I certainly believe that electronics can have an effect on other electronics, I in no way believe that a PED is capable of disrupting any mission-critical system on a modern commercial airliner. This comes from the background of a computer scientist, electrical engineer, and a pilot. The notion that a small portable device could do anything more than interfere with radio communications in a plane is nonsense.

First, there is absolutely no way a phone or similar device can disable autopilot unless it is somehow connected to the avionics systems. The autopilot activation doesn't base anything on radio communications, and all of the aircraft electronics are in fact heavily RF shielded. To trip up an autopilot, a PED would have to somehow disturb the gyroscopes controlling the instrumentation that feeds data to the AP. As these are primarily controlled by independent vacuum systems and physical gyroscopes behind the dials, that seems rather unlikely.

The digital components of the AP, such as RNAV/GPS or an FMC-Managed system would have a slim to nil possibility of interference - however it would not deactivate the AP. It would just return it to pilot control instead of computer control. A pilot that actually has to fly a plane instead of watching the AP do it for him? Oh the horror, oh the humanity!

A majority of the systems even on a modern airplane are mechanical, not electronic. They may have some electronic components to them, but those are usually just to relay the data to a computer monitoring system. They don't affect the primary display or the true value of the instrument readout(unless you're the flight log computer). Do you really think my Kindle is going to kill your fuel pump? Or the hydraulic system? Or the Cabin Pressure Control System? Or the heating pack? Or the FADEC in the engines all the way out on the wing? Or the landing gear?

No. The most it's going to do is add a little static to a radio communication(if miraculously my WiFi radio has a stronger signal than the plane, on a completely unrelated band). These rules are long overdue for reconsideration.

Re:The other side of the story

[ozmanjusri]

Despite what libertards like to believe, in cases like this devices are dangerous until proven safe, not the other way around.

But sometimes it's not clear who they present a danger to.

We're all told to turn off our phones for our own safety, because self-interest is the most persuasive argument available.

Imagine however that you're a network provider with cell-phone towers on flight lines to a major airport. Each tower has to be built to acquire, then hand over more than three hundred simultaneous connections in just a few seconds as each plane passes over. And that's in addition to your real network traffic.

Wouldn't you rather just build the heavy-duty infrastructure in one place (at the airport) and tell everybody to switch their phones on once they've landed?

Re:The other side of the story

[million_monkeys]

While I certainly believe that electronics can have an effect on other electronics, I in no way believe that a PED is capable of disrupting any mission-critical system on a modern commercial airliner. This comes from the background of a computer scientist, electrical engineer, and a pilot. The notion that a small portable device could do anything more than interfere with radio communications in a plane is nonsense.

Ok, a) radio communications are important. Missing a transmission because of interference causes a problem to pilot who didn't get it, and also for every other aircraft on the frequency since valuable radio time is wasted repeating the transmission. b) I assume you're aware that some navigation signals are radio waves. If you're going to concede it can interfere with radio, how are nav system immune? or do you not consider navigation to be "mission critical"?

First, there is absolutely no way a phone or similar device can disable autopilot unless it is somehow connected to the avionics systems. The autopilot activation doesn't base anything on radio communications, and all of the aircraft electronics are in fact heavily RF shielded. To trip up an autopilot, a PED would have to somehow disturb the gyroscopes controlling the instrumentation that feeds data to the AP. As these are primarily controlled by independent vacuum systems and physical gyroscopes behind the dials, that seems rather unlikely.

Depends on the autopilot and what's tracking. If it's following a heading from the gyros, I agree it seems unlikely a PED could somehow mess with the vacuum system. But an AP set to follow a nav signal can't track a signal that isn't coming through. What does it do then?

Do you really think my Kindle is going to kill your fuel pump? Or the hydraulic system? Or the Cabin Pressure Control System? Or the heating pack? Or the FADEC in the engines all the way out on the wing? Or the landing gear?

No, and neither does the FAA. They specifically state that the concern is interference to communication and navigation systems.

Re:The other side of the story

[Technician]

The biggest issue was with FM radios. The desired station is mixed with the local oscillator in the radio to make the Intermediate Frequency of 10.7 Mhz for the filters and FM detector.

This is not a problem with the hardness of the electronics on the plane. This issue is the local osc on many portable radios is not 100% shielded and is 10.7 Mhz above the FM station. This places a Transmitter on the air in the plane on the frequency band for aircraft communication. Many MP3 players, media players, cell phones etc, have an FM tuner. Often the tuner remains on, even when the device is playing other media.

The air distress frequency is 121.5 Mhz. Listening to an FM station on 110.8 will put the LO smack dab on frequency. This is the reason why no FM stations operate on even 100 Khz frequencies. Other aircraft frequencies are within the local oscillator range of FM radios. 105.3 FM will put the local oscillator on 116.4 MHZ in the aircraft band.

References..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_distress_frequency
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_frequency

Re:About time common sense prevailed!

[green1]

citation please?
I've never read a documented case like that, I'm genuinely curious.

Re:About time common sense prevailed!

[joe_frisch]

I have personally observed interference from a camera (Nikon D70) on the navigation instruments on my Bonanza (caused the VOR needle to jump - we were in visual conditions at the time so it wasn't a problem). Of course airliner avionics is better - but we need the odds of substantial interference to be about 1 in a million for it not to be a safety risk.

It is true that many passengers fail to turn of electronics, but remember that the transmit power adds from all the devices. It is possible that 400 cell phones on a plane would be a more serious problem than the few that weren't turned off.

--- Joe Frisch

Re:About time common sense prevailed!

[mcrbids]

As a pilot, takeoff is not at all a sensitive time of flight. Pretty much, you mash the gas all the way forwardward, and keep the plane pretty much in line with the runway. (yawn)

The sensitive part is LANDING the plane! Here, you are actually aiming at the ground with minimal power right up to the last 10 seconds or so, where you pull the nose up just inches off the ground and (if all goes well) allow the loss of speed to force the wings to stop producing enough lift to stay airborne.

It's merely a matter of practice to do safely, but it's *tough* to do elegantly every time. Every pilot blows a landing and bounces or comes down rough every so often.

But again, that's the *pilot* that we're talking about. Personally, I wouldn't care 1 whit about what the passengers do during the landing sequence.