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FAA To Reevaluate Inflight Electronic Device Use
coondoggie writes "If you have been on a commercial airline, the phrase 'The use of any portable electronic equipment while the aircraft is taxiing, during takeoff and climb, or during approach and landing,' is as ubiquitous but not quite as tedious as 'make sure your tray tables are in the secure locked upright position.' But the electronic equipment restrictions may change. The Federal Aviation Administration today said it was forming a government-industry group to study the current portable electronic device use policies commercial aviation use to determine when these devices can be used safely during flight."
Or heaven forbid, silently reading their book on e-book reader.
Why can't people just turn them off for the 30 minutes or so the plane needs to take off, climb-out, execute final approach and landing?
What's the big deal?
I'd rather you were blabbing on the phone than talking to me.
with half a dozen mobile devices, or more - and most of them are on w/ cell signal while I'm flying...
They really should review that policy.
I'm ok with the FAA loosening up on those poor, persecuted, electromagnetic waves that have historically been singled out for persecution and discrimination.
However, I would like to see the draconian measures previously reserved for in-flight electronics applied with redoubled fury against those who have the temerity to emit high volume and/or pitch sound waves, or substantial levels of visible-range electromagnetic radiation during nighttime hours. Those are the true hazard to consumer aviation.
Permit wifi and crack down on screaming children.
"The Federal Aviation Administration today said it was forming a government-industry group to study" = no changes for at least 5 years.
Didn't Mythbusters cover this?
Yes.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
I would bet that more than 50% of devices on planes are already left on for takeoff and landing. The only thing being turned off is the screen.
I don't think they'll reduce the restrictions much, if at all. If it were truly a case about interference and radio waves, then why do they have phones on the planes, tv's built into every head rest, and large tv's in front of the isles? All of those electronics are just fine to use whenever because you have to pay for them. If they start letting us use all of our own stuff up there then that'll be less profit.
Hey, wait. Why is this post adjacent to "How Long Do You Want to Live?"
The general problem on passenger aircraft is orders given by flight attendants over the speaker system that begin/end with "...in accordance with federal regulations..." are parroted and observed with no understanding of why they are in place.
Having the FAA remove the requirement that electronic devices are off does not solve the problem that commercial flying is laden with laws bearing heavy consequences that at times have no connection to common sense, like the electronic device issue.
Philip K Howard points out that the general problem goes much deeper than the FAA, but in the context of "rules on an airplane" the public is very comfortable blindly following laws seemingly without reason. If you disagree, try asking someone on board the next time you take off why you have to have the window shades up, or the seats upright, or the tray table stowed, etc.
...we have the safety zealots who believe that if bans of electronic devices in-flight reduce the risk of crashes by .00000001% then the ban makes sense, because, hey, who's in favor of crashing an airplane? (Those of you raising their hands in favor, please stay seated, a TSA agent will be with you shortly).
In the other corner, we have the airlines, who are opposed to in-flight use of devices to the extent that using such devices denies them their God-given right to monetize every last moment spent on an airliner and that even if making a cellular data connection call in flight wasn't likely to be unreliable, it might keep someone from having to spend $19.99 on BoGo in-flight internet service.
Watching, of course, are all the people who have inadvertently and intentionally left their electronics on and somehow managed to land safely at their destination with the most harrowing part of the flight being the gross weirdo in the seat next to them or the smell coming from the aft lavatory.
I can see why they don't want people using such devices during take off and landing. (i.e, paying attention to the crew in an emergency). If you're using the IFE system, they can interupt that - not if you're on an IPOD buried in a e-reader etc.
I don't see why it has to be all-or-nothing.
Readers, tablets, mp3 players? Cool.
Mobile phone conversations? No way.
And they probably don't need any justification, but they could just say, "we need to keep the obnoxious chatter to a minimum during those times so people will hear instructions and announcements from the crew."
Here in Canada at least you are not supposed to use cell phones while you are in the building.
Very annoying, since when you go to the hospital you have no idea how long it will take and it can take longer than many flights.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Second paragraph in the article. "The group however will not "consider the airborne use of cell phones for voice communications during flight.""
As others have said, this is not about electrical interference but social control. What's the difference between someone reading harry potter on a 1lb device or reading it in it's 10 lb hardcover form? The greater danger is from the projectile the book becomes in a crash. But since there is no FUD means for banning the book, they allow you to read it. But in reality there is no difference so long as the plane doesn't crash.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
The FAA said it is looking for comments in the following areas:
Comments can be emailed to: PEDcomment@faa.gov
They're not talking about using cell phones, cells will most likely be banned anyways because the cell connection could interfere with the airplane's equipment. Of course this could be completely false and cell phones don't create the kind of interference that the industry has assumed it does. tldr; Even if electronics in general are allowed all the time, radio transmission will probably not be.
If they really were a threat to the flight safety, they would just confiscate it before departure, and give it back to you after landing.
Exactly my point. I was responding to the knee jerk reaction of the anon.
Surely if the attacks worked there'd be nothing left to interfere with?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
you mean like people do on trains, buses, etc?
god forbid you're forced to acknowledge that a ton of people are gigantic assholes (including the person who takes personal offense at others daring to communicate) and leave it to society to encourage them to not blab on the phone. You know, like functional society.
Not this again. This has been discussed to death. If they do not ask people to put away regular books, why should I be asked to put away my ebook reader. Either make a consistent rule that one should put away any sort of distraction away, for the sake of situation awareness or dont prohibit anything.
If you think all the pilots are doing is looking at maps, this will blow your mind
http://www.aviation.levil.com/
Basically the all the glass cockpit displays are slowly coming to the ipad as apps. primary flight instruments, engine management displays, ADS-B rx, radar displays, you name it.
You can pay $10K to garmin for each dedicated appliance, or $500 to apple for whats officially called a backup device ...
I suppose its nothing new. Almost 20 years ago I knew pilots "sneaking" consumer GPS units and handheld air-band radios into their airplane as "backup devices"
It makes sense to me. Every pilot has a nightmare of full electrical failure at night in IFR conditions... so your flight bag has a flashlight or two, hand held gps, hand held radio, and now an ipad and some gadgetry and cables.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Heh - like you would get a signal at that height. I didn't read TFA but the only way you will get a decent signal on a plane will be via a system designed to work at 30000ft by people who would sooner their plane not crash because you sent a tweet.
How many planes have crashed due to somebody not switching their phone of?
Cell phone use on commercial flights aren't banned because of the disruption they do to the airplane, they are banned because of the disruption they will do to the cell network. At 30,000 feet, your cell phone will attempt to connect to 100's of cells at once. This obviously causes network congestion. If people really did turn off their phones during commercial flights, we would have more cell bandwidth on the ground.
37.
The moment I have to sit and listen to the guy next to / behind / in front / etc. of me talk all flight long on his cell phone is the moment I stop flying. Cell phone usage should still be banned unless people can fully embrace the Japanese culture around public phone usage (i.e. go hide somewhere people can't hear you, and then still whisper and cover the phone).
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Ebooks make you look like a hipster. And it is the duty of every airline to harass the hipsters about their electronic shirts, anti-TSA logos, and funny electronics. But don't worry, pretty soon black rimmed glasses and mixed "vintage-inspired" clothing will get you put on the no-fly list.
In other news, Crocs will always be welcome (because they scare hipsters).
Are they more or less likely to spontaneously errupt in flames when on, or when off?
Right, because terrorists would not attack anything were there laws prohibiting such attacks, ergo they would obey the electronics restrictions were they in place. The ONLY thing stopping them right now is not the fear of being killed by legitimate passengers, but the silly restriction against using electronics which CAN NOT and DO NOT interfere with properly-installed-and-maintained avionics.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Look at the folks whining about the risks of interference, in this supposedly informed audience.
Think about it for a minute. If there was ANY real risk of a cell phone or any other electronic device IN ANY WAY interfering with aircraft electronics, do you really think that the FAA would even allow them aboard? Would they allow 150 cell phones, all supposedly capable of interfering with the electronics and bringing the plane down, onto every single flight? 150 terrorist weapons on every flight! Really?
Have you never seen anyone forget or simply refuse to turn off their devices and have no effect on the aircraft at all? Have you, as have I, not ever innocently forgotten the cell phone turned on in your pocket to no effect at all? I'll wager that 25% of them are left on during every flight.
They won't allow you to carry on more than four ounces of spring water(liquid)! But, they don't have any problem with this "dangerous" device on everyone's hip? Think people! Think!
P.S. For those of you that will now link to obscure pilots reports of "strange" behavior of the aircraft's electronics and their self attribution of that behavior to passenger electronics; forget it. These reports have been repeatedly debunked. The fact is that it is proven that many pilots are very capable of driving a plane while still being complete idiots; reporting interfering passenger electronics and flying saucer sightings and flybys.
Nobody ever bothers me about my devices when the plane is in-flight. My phone is in "airplane mode", the wifi is off on my eReader, and the tablet similarly has wifi/bluetooth/etc turned off.
Nobody's ever given me any grief about it so long as the devices are off for takeoff/landing. Most airlines do mention having the cellphones turned off, but the rest are just suppose to be not broadcasting. I suppose if I wanted to game with other people in-flight through wifi it might be needed, but what's the issue here?
getting hit in the head by a flying laptop after a hard stop.
what i don't want to hear is that a Pilot 1 Got a High Score in Angry Birds 2 "landed" a Plane in a Mountain
oh and for those that say "But I have an IPod Pico so why should i have to turn it off" i give you a lesson in basic Physics
Mass Times Acceleration = Force so even 2.31 grams flying about the cabin (at 45meters per second) can hurt somebody
(and btw im all for a Pilot having an iFly (Commercial Pilot edition) Ap installed just stay away from Angry Birds while In Flight)
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This is why on aircraft that are licensed to allow cell phone use carry their own femtocell style access points. There aren't many airlines/aircraft that are licensed, but the trials have been in place for some time.
The main problem with cell phones on planes is a customer problem: the cost. They charge at international roaming rates, so it's not worth it unless you're making money off the call.
Turn the goddamn off! Like that old joke, "Tray up, bitch!"
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Like it matters what they die from. What the FAA and every other entity has to worry about is what an ignorant populace, fear-mongering media, and money-grubbing lawyers will blame. Its easy to imagine headlines like "200 Dead In Fiery Crash, Was The Recently Lifted Cell Phone Ban To Blame?"
Cell phone do not interfere with airplane equipment. Totally different frequency bands. Cell phones are used on planes (surreptitiously) every day. Occasionally and angry stewardess, but no other ill effects.
Cell phones are not allowed on planes at the behest of the FCC, because the cell systems we use today were never designed for hand off calls over vast regions at the speed of a plane, and a phone at cruise altitude could light up a thousand towers. This prohibition was always an FCC issue, and never much of a concern for the FAA.
WIFI would be just as likely to interfere as would cellular radio.
Yet wifi on the planes is already available on many flights.
With wifi, you can do voip. Almost every Android phone has Voip (internet calling) built in.
As of this time, none of the airlines allowing WIFI let you use any Voice app. They claim bandwidth issues.
However voice does not take as much bandwidth as most people think.
I suspect there is still some security concerns with allowing voice communications that are the real hold up here, I doubt there are any real technological issues in providing the bandwidth. On the other hand they do allow text chat apps, as well as email.
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If your phone can connect to a tower 32,000’ away including all the scattering that buildings cause then there's no reason why it couldn't just because the signal is travelling in a more perpendicular direction with no obstacles.
Cellular antennas are optimized to receive signals in a horizontal "circle" parallel to the ground, so reception above/below a tower is poor.
If you're in the air, you're not connecting to a tower 32,000' below you, you're connecting to a whole bunch of towers 32,000' feet below you and 20+ miles away. Cellular signals will actually go pretty far with clear LOS, although the phone has to up the signal strength quite a bit, which is why a phone with a cellular antenna left on in-flight will burn a ton of battery.
paintball
You bring a very interesting point. I've been traveling a lot, and I've seen people that text during landing, and others that just tap the power button of their device thinking that's enough to power it off.
Since this behavior cannot be controlled and it's certainly not enforced, maybe the FAA should really look into it.
I sat next to a relief pilot on a United flight from PHX to SFO. He talked on his cell phone from the moment we got on, until he lost his signal after takeoff. As soon as he got a signal again, he was talking all through the approach and landing. He still had it stuck to his ear as we walked off the plane. The cabin crew didn't say a word to him.
You might be able to keep a call going during takeoff and landing, but otherwise, cellular phones are not likely to be usable for voice calls except on airplanes that provide internal picocells. You'd drop the call every minute or two. First, cellular phones have about a 10,000 foot ceiling, give or take, depending on how the towers are aimed. Second, cellular handoff barely works reliably at city street speeds, much less ten times that. Third, the cellular phone network isn't expecting a single phone to simultaneously see a couple of dozen towers spread out across a large distance. And because the ground isn't nearby to reduce signal propagation, it is even possible that GSM phones would suddenly be able to "see" towers beyond the 22 mile range limit, which could cause all sorts of fun problems that would not normally occur with phones near the ground.
Text messages, on the other hand, would probably work, albeit sporadically.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
a phone at cruise altitude could light up a thousand towers.
so you are saying that if i leave my phone on, it can screw my devil worshiping service provider? duly noted sir!!
They don't allow any streaming video either.
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'Hey, hey you get back here'
the difference that i see, is that I can take my 1000 page paperback and throw it as hard as i could and it would hardly even hurt you. the hardback of the same book will likely hurt, but the e-reader with its strong construction that is made to not give is most likely going to cause the most amount of damage. and if it hits something and comes apart it there could be flying glass all over the place.
my understanding of why the items need to be put away was that it is the same reasoning as to why you need to wear the seatbelt. its not to keep you safe in your seat, its more to keep you from becoming a projectile weapon.
+1 the need for a functional society
If there are radio frequency emissions from your CPU, your GPU, etc., you *could* be interfering. If there are emissions from your RF-rich device that wasn't properly designed, why that's your problem (or more properly, the people who manufactured the iWhatsit).
FWIW, I once enjoyed an LAX->PDX (Los Angeles to Portland OR) flight where I used my pillow to hide the GPS antenna (we're talking Garmin GPS III here) that was jammed against the left window (hooray for window seats!) and used a WinXX laptop connected by serial cable to watch our progress, with some software I don't remember at the moment. The altimeter function of the GPS was pretty acurate, and it was fun to observe how the pilot strictly followed "IFR" (I Follow Roads) rules. We tracked Interstate 5 up to the Oregon border, then we cut across from Grass Pants (oops, Grant's Pass) direct to Portland. I didn't, in fact, blow up the airliner in flight - and we landed without incident. Those were the days.
The plane didn't suddenly swerve when I switched on the GPS, or for that matter, the laptop. Eternity did not stare the passengers right in the face. Calamity did not ensue.
This is not presented as an absolute refutation of claims made by various (too lazy to work) government employees. It's my personal experience. I ENJOYED seeing where we were. It didn't matter where we were, it was simply enjoyable to be empowered to the point where I had independent confirmation we weren't on a direct route to Miami FL (or pick some other destination.)
Much ado about nothing, sez I.
The problem with VOIP on planes is latency (200+ms), not bandwidth.
Actually, the receiver will generate very low level signals that propagate out from the device as part of the Rx circuits. This is no big deal - unless your GPS is in your pocket, you're in the window seat, and the plane's GPS receiver is mounted between the plastic interior skin and the outer aluminum skin (what, you thought the plane's GPS RF section was in the cockpit?). Your GPS receiver will be putting out a tiny signal, but it may still swamp the signal being received from the satellites 12,000 miles (20000 km) away.
For example, there was a report to the NASA pilot safety program:
"In 2007, one pilot recounted an instance when the navigational equipment on his Boeing 737 had failed after takeoff. A flight attendant told a passenger to turn off a hand-held GPS device and the problem on the flight deck went away." (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/business/18devices.html). This is apocryphal, and even if true would likely be the result of a badly damaged or badly designed device that didn't meet FCC regulations - but if you're going to allow a million people to carry on any electronic device they might have, in whatever condition it might be in, you're going to run into these kinds of receive-only-devices-that-transmit-worrisome-amounts-of-unexpected_RF.
This (http://gpsinformation.net/airgps/gsm_intf1.pdf) discusses the likely interference caused by phones in an aircraft; the big worry isn't so much modern planes and electronics, as it is electronics and planes designed before 1984:
"From the above, by comparing the test results with the qualification levels given in Section 2, it
can be seen that interference levels produced by a portable telephone, used near the flight deck or
avionics equipment bay, will exceed demonstrated susceptibility levels for equipment qualified to
standards published prior to July 1984. Since equipment qualified to these standards are installed in older
aircraft, and can be installed (and is known to be installed) in newly built aircraft, current policy for
restricting the use of portable telephones on all aircraft will need to remain in force." Of course, this document is 12 years old now, discussing designs that were current 16 years previously.
And the worms ate into his brain.
Yes but you have to look at it from the point of view of the cabin crew. They can't take the time to evaluate every single piece of electronic equipment passengers want to use during the flight to make sure that none of them are transmitting. God, look how long it takes everyone just to stow their bags and sit their asses down in their seats. Now imagine the cabin crew having to check everyone's devices individually as well. The plane would never take off. So its easier to use the blanket statement of "No electronic devices during take off and landing". Honestly, is it really that fucking hard to not fiddle with your gps, or phone, or kindle, or tablet, or ipad, or whatever for a few minutes? Read the damn sky mall magazine for fuck's sake.
Please for the love of all thats Holy make sure you maximize how "happy' the kid is.
1 dress the kid in clothes for Comfort Not Fashion
2 sort out enough "snax" to keep the kid fed
3 make sure you have enough changes for the kid (and please get a bag from the Staff to dispose of the "spent" changes)
4 invest in an airline capable power cable and earphones for the kids media device (have they started providing USB power ports in seats yet??
5 have a couple doses of any meds the kid is taking (allergy meds cough drops ect)
http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/children/index.shtm ---- note you can carry meds as needed
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My point wasn't about stray RF emitted from a maltfunctioning device. There are just scores of people out there who think that their wimpy GPS receiver is transmitting signals to the GPS satellites.
Ummm, what about the for-pay phones in the backs of seats you swipe your card through to make a call? I somehow doubt it's an issue of 'security concerns with allowing voice communications' at all.
The electronic device ban has been kept in place at the airlines request... so they can sell you the bullshit back-of-the-seat movie/map thing for $30/flight. Now they are realizing that everyone's ignoring the damned rule so now they want to sell in-flight wifi and will ban cellular traffic "because it's dangerous"
If a 747 could be brought down by some random device I bought at best buy, I think terrorists would have a lot easier of a time doing their jobs.
You really don't have that much bandwidth to hand around. Depending on radio conditions you might have 100kb/s - for everyone to share.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
That's what he said. Look again :)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
You can't call another plane, and they can shut them off on approach and take off.
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Read the damn sky mall magazine for fuck's sake.
Why would I want to read material that's 98% advertisement?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The flux compass doohickeys are not in the cockpit. Neither are the communications radios.
Those are all on the wings, belly, and back of the plane - around the passengers.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
You must have bought that phone outside the US? (GPS need to shut themselves down above certain altitudes and velocities to be commercially sold in the US, for "weaponization" reasons)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
You really don't have that much bandwidth to hand around. Depending on radio conditions you might have 100kb/s - for everyone to share.
Sez who?
LTE can easily reach 6 miles, with acceptable performance at 18 miles. WiMax can push to 30 miles.
So simply optimizing an LTE radio for vertical lobes in addition to horizontal will easily service a couple hundred phones
thru an on-board femtocell, or an onboard wifi router.
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This ban on wireless has always been a red herring. Mobile devices typically operate at a couple of watts, tops. Meanwhile, while taking off or landing, a plane is going to pass fairly close to many cell towers, each of which is belting out much more powerful, much more continuous signals.
And nothing happens.
Planes are also hit with radar from ATC, MET, TCAS, and more, plus massive signals from broadcast media. All the time.
And nothing happens.
Banning this stuff was partly out of what-if fears, and partly because it was an area where the agency and airlines could impose their control upon the public. They really and truly get off on being able to tell us to stand there, do this, don't do that, don't bring water, don't use your phone, don't use your GPS, don't use your laptop, and so on, with "it's against the law" as justification 1, "it's policy" as justification 2 and "We'll arrest you sucka!" as justification 3, and finally to sum up them all: "OMG the plane might crash!"
Sig for hire.
If it were likely that "accidental" cell phone use would crash airplanes it already would have happened. It doesn't even have to be very likely for a ban on bringing cell phones on planes. They even ban carry on shampoo. The whole thing is a farce.
I can understand the potential concern with transmission capabilities.
But many airlines will tell you that even if you can shut that off (ie, "Airplane Mode"), it's still not enough and the device must be completely shut off. Which makes no sense whatsoever.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Or "just tap the power buton of their device thinking that's enough to convince the flight attendant it's off".
The thing that always gets me is the "cell phones but not other device" allowed until you reach the gate. How is is that, during the flight, cell phones send signals to the flight control and radar telling them to turn on their human masters, but everything else is okay, while once the plane is on the ground, cell phones are okay, but somehow if I use an mp3 player that DOESN'T have a phone plan attached to it, arcs of lightning will shoot out and melt everyone's eyeballs.
So bring a book or magazine. Or chat with your seatmate. Or take a nap. It takes about half an hour for the plane to reach cruising altitude. You'll survive.
Obviously it's really hard to pin down why this rule went into effect in the first place, but a flight instructor of mine said that the rule was put into place on behest of cell phone carriers to protect cell phone towers from getting overwhelmed. He argued that the signal from a single cell phone in the air would propagate much further than one on land, and thus put an undue burden on cell towers within line of sight of the plane, especially when we are talking about planes full of people taking off from major metropolitan airports.
I'm not sure if this is true or is bullshit, but I thought I would throw it out there as a possible reason.
-- Marcio
Like it or not, harmonics and spurious emissions are a fact of life. So it is not inconceivable that a plane full of 200+ people with phones (which most commonly now have three or more transceivers each) could cause some interference. Some will have a phone and a laptop with one or more additional radios in the laptop. That comes out to quite a lot of rf noise. When the penalty for a problem could realistically be hundreds of people dying, why take the risk so someone can check their facebook in the air?
The FCC is handling this correctly. The people have an interest in using these devices so the FCC is studying what the impact will be and making decisions accordingly.
This study is being done by the FAA, and not be the FCC, and they are not considering phones.
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Imagine most of the cell phones in all the airplanes in the air bombarding their signals over the huge coverage areas they have when up at those heights (10km and up). Each tower is going to see several thousand cell phones hitting it all day long.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Yes. Then your local cell tower might have sufficient capacity to serve the hundred or so users it has, not having to deal with several thousand pounding on it from all those airplanes high up in the sky.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The limits on GPS are a fair way beyond what you get with commercial passenger aircraft.
According to wikipedia the CoCom limits are "moving faster than 1,000 knots (1,900 km/h; 1,200 mph) at an altitude higher than 60,000 feet (18,000 m)"
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Nothing like passengers, that's you people, telling me in the cockpit how there is no interference. You are correct, if your mobile is a CDMA device, I won't hear it in my headset, but GSM is another matter, AT&T's frequency band being the worst offender. Granted the interference is subtle, but the "tower pinging" is most definitely there. Not all the time, typically around 10,000' and below. But please continue to explain how it doesn't bother me, or my fellow pilots. After all, you are the paying customer, and the customer is always correct.
VOIP calls generally utilize somewhere (depending on the codec used) between 50-160kbps or so.
Then again, 50 people talking at once is ~8Mb/sec, which is a significant amount of bandwidth. At high utilization rates, call quality could be a problem as well.
Another consideration is the revenue stream that airlines derive from charging you to use *their* phones. We mustn't upset that apple cart. It could spell doom for the airlines. :)
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Leaving aside for a second whether or not cellular communications or wifi signals are actually BAD for a flight, it's fairly easy to see the difference between your ereader and a book. I've never seen a book with a 3G or a WiFi card. Can you imagine the bedlam it would created if the flight attendants had to memorize or verify the communication status of all the current ereaders out there? Simpler to just require them all to be off.
Or much more likely, it will stay on, not in flight mode, in someone's bag. Along with their cellphone.
This is why on aircraft that are licensed to allow cell phone use carry their own femtocell style access points. There aren't many airlines/aircraft that are licensed, but the trials have been in place for some time.
The main problem with cell phones on planes is a customer problem: the cost. They charge at international roaming rates, so it's not worth it unless you're making money off the call.
Most of us travelling on business have no problem paying $2-3 a minute for international calls. I ran up a $160 data bill this month. It's peanuts compared to the cost of sending me somewhere on a plane. Hell a flak jacket alone costs $100 to rent.
Or some of us even know about airplane mode and know that with the radio off there is no difference between my cell phone and your ipod.
For some people a flight is a major event. They want to record it on the GPS, camera and camcorder.
So, you didn't read your parent's post then?
even if it's a 100% non-transmitting device, like a GPS receiver
Was what he said before telling the story. I know, I know, this is /. and no one reads what they're responding to.
e-reader with its strong construction that is made to not give is most likely going to cause the most amount of damage. and if it hits something and comes apart it there could be flying glass all over the place.
So, you've never seen a Kindle then.
Electronic devices are forbidden because you get DISTRACTED in delicate moments of flight!!!!
Not because of some strange kepler belt related issue!!!
Please... Really... WAKE UP!!!
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/03/faa-to-revisit-the-use-of-certain-personal-electronics-on-flights/
Pretty much anything electronic generates some noise, as pretty much everything has some sort of oscillator in it, because these days everything has some sort of microprocessor in it. Even if your device is off, its battery might have its own processor ticking away. Any device which remembers the correct time through power-down must have *some* oscillator running ALL THE TIME. Your phone probably has 3-4 radios in it (1/2/3/4G, WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, FM). There's so much complexity hidden in modern stuff (not just obvious electronic devices like phones/laptops) that people forget it's even there. And sometimes made very poorly.
There is no music - home taping killed it.
You're correct the "bandwidth" arguments is a lie.
They don't allow voice apps because they don't want people coordinating attacks with them.
It's impossible to coordinate something with irc, or email, or im, or twitter, or facebook.
I find being offended by me offensive.
At 30,000 feet, your cell phone will attempt to connect to 100's of cells at once.
Uh...nope. Cell towers don't have omnidirectional antennae, mindlessly broadcasting signal in all directions. They have sector antennae and are usually aimed slightly downards or, at best, level with the horizon. Your phone can't reach them at 30,000 feet and neither can they reach you.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Die in a fire, spammer. Forgot to log out?
Oh, btw: APU is already taken.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
True, I had a stupid moment.
That said, those are the maximal limits. Nothing stops the manufacturer from imposing lower limitations.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
If I can't use a Kindle (not the Kindle Fire, the plain old Kinlde), then II want them to make everyone take the batteries out of their LCD watches, because they're emitting about the same radio noise as my Kindle.
In Reason We Trust
They even make you turn off an analogue cassette player. Nonsensical.
If 're going to crash and burn on take off or landing, I want to at least enjoy it.
Air rage will be a major cause of interrupted flights, if people blather on their phones in the air like they do on the ground. Bus rides usually aren't that long. In trains you can move to a different car. But cooped up in a tin can on a long-haul trans-Pacific flight with someone who won't stop yakking?
Death penalty. It's the only punishment that fits the crime.
But how much do you want to bet that once they magnanimously allow blathering, the airlines will start charging more for seats outside the blather zone?
How do they know if it is in airplane mode, or that the airplane mode works? The device could be malfunctioning and transmitting a signal.
Granted, it might do that even if turned off, but the risk would likely be lower.
In any case, it makes more sense to design the planes to handle anything short of a jammer inside rather than try to control the behavior of hundreds of people. If it really were unsafe for somebody to leave a phone turned on in their purse then we'd have planes falling out of the sky left and right.
There's a Myth Buster episode that someone referred to that showed that cellphones could interfere with airplane transmissions if the airplane isn't shielded properly. In my opinion it's completely bogus to not allow electronics in general during the whole flight. Especially since they're telling you to put away low powered devices that have no chance of creating interference. I'm just saying that the only remote possible thing that they could do is not allow cellphones during takeoff/landing and leave everything else alone. In the end they probably have some very stupid (non-safety reason) for not changing the policy.
50 calls at $1 per minute for a 1 hour flight is $3000 dollars. That'll pay for about a month of 8 Mbps, every single hour.. And VoIP is generally 120 kbps for the worst codec, and under 20 kbps for the best (16 kbps payload, plus overhead).
Learn to love Alaska
You are on slashdot, aren't you?
Learn to love Alaska
I can use adblock on the internet. My eyes don't seem to have a compatible plugin interface.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The content is slashvertisements and shills. Not just the ads on the side.
Learn to love Alaska