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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."
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.
Because the reason they are banned isn't because of electromagnetic emissions, but rather because it is a crowd control technique. There's nothing special about the first 10 and last 10 minutes of a flight, other than it's the most likely time for a plane to crash land. The regulation is all about causing passengers to pay attention to flight attendants and nothing to do with avionics.
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.
Hey, wait. Why is this post adjacent to "How Long Do You Want to Live?"
Second paragraph in the article. "The group however will not "consider the airborne use of cell phones for voice communications during flight.""
I used to travel for a living and I couldn't begin to tell you how many times I saw people leave their portable electronic devices on. Whether this was an accident or not I couldn't tell you of course, but I would have to imagine that if you were extrapolate a dozen cell phones a flight by a couple thousand flights a day etc.....
Point being that there is overwhelming real world evidence that portable electronic devices just don't bring airliners. If that was actually the case we would have had airliners falling out of the sky on a daily basis every day for many years now. The rules for turning the devices off have no basis in reality and are as outdated as the manual typewriter. They need overturned and left in the dustbin of history...
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.
Speaking as someone who flies all the time for work, I've never been asked by a flight attendant to put away my paper book, or on the few times when I've had it out, my knitting, during takeoff OR landing. And this has been on flights where I have seen them getting on to people about electronic devices. The whole thing is a poorly enforced regulation that may have had a purpose in the early days of analog cell phones that put out a lot of interference and instruments that were possibly vulnerable to them, but these days it seems more than a bit out of date. And poorly enforced, I see people 'hiding' their cell phones all the time during takeoff and landing and just making sure they don't let the flight attendant see......
Free Pie! The Pie is Also Evil!
I fly all the time and have never once been asked to stow a book, including one I am actively reading.
Furthermore, they require the devices be OFF rather than simply stowed. If my phone is turned off and I can demonstrate it, they don't care if it's sitting in my hands and I'm playing with it, ineffectually pressing buttons and making wooshing sounds as I fly it around my immediate airspace. I say this from first-hand experience.
Which by process of elimination leaves...d) outdated paranoia?
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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
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.