Slashdot Mirror
FAA Device Rules Illustrate the Folly of a Regulated Internet
First time accepted submitter cathyreisenwitz writes "The New York Times' Bits blog has a great piece on the FAA's inconvenient, outdated and unhelpful rules regarding electronic devices on planes: 'Dealing with the F.A.A. on this topic is like arguing with a stubborn teenager. The agency has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane's avionics, but it still perpetuates such claims, spreading irrational fear among millions of fliers.' The rules illustrate why we shouldn't let the government regulate the internet: Government regulations are nearly always outdated and too cautious."
Imagine if the avionics industry wasn't regulated?
love is just extroverted narcissism
The agency has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane's avionics
That is not how it work is aviation. The rule is you have to prove it is not harmful.
Don't like it ? change the rules, but then those rules apply to everyone and everything involved in aviation, not only consumer electronic devices.
...this is kind of like saying "Since this one agency is finicky about technology, government regulation is ineffective and outdated. As such, the government shouldn't regulate medicine!"
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
The blog uses a lot of charged words without saying anything of value. "Rules bad. Regulations bad. FAA dumb." And somehow this translates directly into "regulating the Internet is doomed to fail."
First, I completely disagree with the "FAA dumb" comment. The FAA may be cautious, yes, but their mandate is aircraft safety -- it's their job to be cautious. I don't disagree with the other sentiments, but there is no logical argument put forth that explains why the rules are bad, why the regulations fail, or why the approach taken by an agency whose job is human safety (and not human convenience) will somehow doom the internet.
John
There has to be proof that such devices CAN'T harm a plane's avionics. Once that is done, we'll be able to play with our toys.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Avionics are safety critical. Is playing with electronic toys that important to you?
Maybe you should pause from your obsession with continuous entertainment to think. That's the stuff some people do when they're not being entertained.
"FAA" and "Government" are not synonyms.
The FAA has a distinctly different reputation, M.O., and set of priorities then, say, the FCC. You know, the people who would actually be regulating the internet.
Cover your ass
I learned about it in high school
The whiners are whining now but if there is an accident and the smallest shed of a hypothesis that someone's iPhone or droid caused the crash during takeoff or landing the same media and whiners will be calling for everyone to be fired for allowing it
While the FAA has rules regarding electronics usage, cell phones in airplanes are covered specifically by the FCC. The FCC bans them because of the tax it would put on the system with thousands of cell phones switching cell towers much more rapidly then if those same phones were driving. They were worried about the significant overhead this would cause the cell system. While I've seen and heard many people complain about how much they don't believe that their phones would interfere with any avionics in any way, and they should be allowed to use them, I've never seen anyone address this specifically. What bothers me even more is that I've heard so many people complain about this, yet a simple wiki search reveals the actual reasoning behind the ban. I'm not saying it's justified or not, but if you're going to complain about something, at least don't be ignorant about it. Even if they didn't interfere with the airplane, there's more to it than that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft specifically- United States: To prevent disruption to the cell phone network from the effects of fast-moving cell phones at altitude (see discussion below), the FCC has banned the use of cell phones on all aircraft in flight.
Because with the flight crew you're dealing with a limited number of devices and a limited amount of potential RF interference. Extend that to passengers and you have not just 1-2 but possibly a hundred or more devices simultaneously, and that can have a drastically different effect on the avionics.
If I pour a gallon of water into a standard rowboat on a lake, it's not going to sink. If I pour another gallon of water in, it's still not going to sink. 2 gallons just isn't enough to cause a problem. even 5-6 gallons isn't. But if I pour a couple hundred gallons in, it's going to sink. I can't go "Well, adding another gallon didn't make a difference, so adding another gallon more won't either." indefinitely. At some point you reach the straw that broke the camel's back. When reaching that point can potentially get 200 or so people killed as the plane stops flying, I'd really rather we avoided going there.
Well, yes. Pilots are allowed to do all kinds of things we aren't allowed to. I am in favor of looser regulation re:electronics (mile-high LAN party, anyone?), but I disagree strongly with your reasoning.
AT&T was convinced that circuit switching (rather than packet switching) was the way to go. It took DARPA (you know, the government) years to convince them otherwise, in some cases going behind their backs to do so. They also spent decades telling people that only AT&T equipment can be installed in their homes, and there's no way you can use your own phone since it may damage their circuitry.
Don't think that only government comes up with crappy rules.
The agency has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane's avionics
That's weird. Just ask an A+P mechanic who's had to track down weird interference problems on a plane.
Also its just gossip but most pilot lounges have had an informal conversation or two along the lines of "fly over that tower and your avionics get weird"
The killer is stuff like ancient NDB/ADF radios... as long as there's a published ILS NDB approach in the entire USA airspace, you'll be stuck with what amounts to AM radio avionics on planes which are pretty good at hearing interference. Its possible, although hard, to mess up a VOR rx. I'm guessing VHF FM land mobile hand held radios (like, police and fire radios) are never going to be permitted on flying aircraft unless permanently installed and tested. GPS seems pretty hard to jam, but now you've got a single point of failure. Maybe a GPS, glosnass, and galileo triple stack of satnav would be approved, in a couple decades. Maybe.
The FCC is uninterested in REALLY enforcing unintentional radiator regulations. Once in a while for a political stunt. The most /. famous story I can think of was the original class A rated TRS-80 model I being sold to class B residential users, that thing was so electrically noisy that the 'Shack gave up and released the model III instead of trying to patch up the model I. If they really enforced standards, then maybe the FAA could do some EMC/EMI work to prove a VOR rx cannot be interfered with, etc. But they don't, and there's a world full of noisy junk as any HF ham radio operator will attest, so...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I think you got that backwards.
The FAA does not have to prove that mobile devices endanger aircraft electronics. Those whose manufacture or those who want to use those devices on a plane need to prove that it doesn't.
Yes, I know that some people get a heart attack if they can't check their e-mail, FB and Twitter for 20 seconds, but last time I checked, we all agree that "default deny" is the proper firewall policy. So with all security systems. If you don't know something is harmless, you need to treat it as a potential danger, until it is proven to be safe.
And when a mistake can kill a few hundred people, you err on the side of caution. Always.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
There's still a strong argument against permitting passenger electronics, but it's convoluted and you'll have to stick through a few points.
When you add up all those factors, the FAA is playing it cautiously, but rationally. They don't get to say "let's see just how many flights are adversely impacted if we allow everyone to turn on randomly RF emitting electronics."
Sure, I know my iPad and iPhone and Kindle won't harm the plane's avionic system. You may know yours won't, either. But my nephew bought a cheap gray market phone that spews RF noise like a plague rat. How does a non-electronic-engineer flight attendant tell the difference?
John
I just RTFA. So “Cathy” says the FAA is dumb. OK. She doesn’t supply a last name, so I’m not sure that inspires confidence.
I once had a rather large aircraft manufacturer as a client. I asked one of the engineers about the cell-phones-off policy. He gave me several insights that were rather interesting.
One of the functions of his group is to customize aircraft with electronic devices used by government agencies. As part of that, they had to insure such devices would not interfere with the aircraft control and navigation systems – and they found minor changes in position would greatly affect the results. It turns out putting all that gear inside a metal tube creates all sorts of reflections and other fun stuff. He was of the opinion that some combination of cell phone quantities and positions would surely create an issue. Just because we get away with it does not mean it won’t happen.
This is outside my field, and he might be totally wrong. But I thought I should share a data point.
Place nail here >+
Nope. All you need is a number of devices greater than the number required to cause a problem. We have evidence that it's greater than 2-3. Can you present any evidence that it's always going to be greater than the number of seats on the airliner in question?
You mean there are infinitely many seats on an airplane?
Of course there are. Just keep booking as many paying passengers as you can, and if too many show up just bump them to the next flight.
Hasn't it always worked that way?
The FAA has a distinctly different reputation, M.O., and set of priorities then, say, the FCC.
Is there an FBB which is somewhere in between the two?
Jesus, check out the linked NYT article and save yourself some embarrassment. "The F.A.A. then told me that “two iPads are very different than 200.” But experts at EMT Labs, an independent testing facility in Mountain View, Calif., say there is no difference in radio output between two iPads and 200. “Electromagnetic energy doesn’t add up like that. Five Kindles will not put off five times the energy that one Kindle would,” explained Kevin Bothmann, EMT Labs testing manager. “If it added up like that, people wouldn’t be able to go into offices, where there are dozens of computers, without wearing protective gear.” "Bill Ruck, principal engineer at CSI Telecommunications, a firm that does radio communications engineering, added: “Saying that 100 devices is 100 times worse is factually incorrect. Noise from these devices increases less and less as you add more.”
No, no it's not. If that were the case then people wouldn't be allowed to read books and magazines during the pre-flight briefing. Quit spreading FUD and read the linked article FFS
On an even larger scale, look at the effect of the privatization of the military. When I was in high school ('70s) guys would go into the Army and when they got out they would at least know how to maintain a jeep, type, fix electronics, or drive a bulldozer. Hell, even Beetle Bailey did enough KP to work in a restaurant when he got out. Today all that's done by subcontractors that cost 5-20 times as much as having the grunts do it, and at the end of their service the only training the ex-soldiers have is how to kill people.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
"Government regulations are nearly always outdated and too cautious."
Um, no, that is the opposite of the truth. Government regulations are nearly always up-to-date and too lenient -- but if you look hard enough, you can find the one or two exceptions, such as Kindles on airplanes. You can weigh that one single instance against, say, the hundreds of thousands of building codes and food safety regulations.
That's not to say we shouldn't clean up those rare exceptions when we find them. We should, and we should with this one instance. But only a libertarian would be so daft as to ignore the vast overwhelming evidence presented by reality in order to hole up inside a small dark den of anarchistic ideology.
I'd agree if it weren't for 3G connectivity. Most of the comments here don't differentiate between, say, my wristwatch with an oscillator running at 32.768kHz, an Android tablet w/o 3/4G connectivity and no WiFi connection, and an iPhone trying to connect with the closest cell tower. We're talking orders of magnitude differences in signal strength, and different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. A pilot using an iPad with no cellular activity and with WiFi turned off is a lot different than dozens of cellular and WiFi radios in the cabin running at various power levels.
Another point is that if my Android tablet interferes with my car radio, no one gets hurt. That may not be the case for interference with avionics. In a worse case scenario, you can end up with a lot of dead people. Higher risk requires greater caution.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
It's amazing the mental contortions one must go through to convince themselves this is actually a problem. If this danger was actually present, it would be used to take down airplanes. The fact that that has not occurred, and the fact that the FAA permits me to bring these devices on board but won't permit me to bring a metal fork on board, should be evidence enough for anyone that this is a load of bullshit.
The FAA's role is to be extremely cautious. Aviation's one of those things where minor mistakes can have disastrous consequences. Same kind of thing as with medical devices: they had better work, perfectly, every time. And since individual components can fail, the backup systems also need to just plain work. The more outside factors can interfere with the system, the harder it is to analyze down to some large number of 9's. So don't expect the FAA to move quickly when it comes to authorizing any changes, including RF that might or might not be generated from the cabin. Given the wide range of consumer electronics, they want to make sure that the worst case scenario won't come close to generating problems for the avionics, particularly during takeoff and landing. They'll get around to it, but only after doing lots of homework. I wouldn't want to fly on a plane whose owner is allowed to cut corners on safety; the airlines would do everything they could to save money.
The internet is a very different kind of system, and the role of government regulation is different. I *do* want government regulation of the form that protects us from "regulation" by private service providers -- things like upload/download limits, preferential treatment for certain kinds of content, functionality with all devices (I don't want to be told that I have to run Windows, for example). Net neutrality requires either effective government regulation or real competition, and for some strange reason, real competition in telecommunications doesn't seem to be a stable situation. Look at what's happened since ATT was broken up; the industry has reconsolidated around a couple of big companies that seem content to divide up the pie rather than seriously compete with one another.
Chattanooga, Tennessee is doing very nicely with public internet. Around here my only choice for fast internet seems to be Comcast, with its high prices and 250 GB monthly cap (I ran a script on my system, and found that it's not hard to hit half of that, on a much lower bandwidth DSL line). Verizon hasn't bothered to build out FIOS to my area, and while that may be fast compared to most of the US, it would be very slow in Chattanooga (or many other countries).
I just don't believe that that kind of situation is going to get fixed without government regulation. Google is in the process of building out Kansas City (?), but that kind of piecemeal approach isn't going to solve the broader problem.
No accidents, but there have been issues.
NASA keeps a database which people will voluntarily contribute to discussing various issues that occur on flights. Do a quick search for PEDs (Passenger Electronic Device) and you'll see a few incidents. And these are just ones that are Voluntarily reported.
That said, I also note that many of the incidents come from older planes.
Here's a list of all of them.
http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/docs/rpsts/ped.pdf
Not a single one is proven to be RF interference from a handheld device.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Anecdotally, I believe there is an infinitesimally small chance that the EMI from even a gray market electronic device is going to bring down a plane. Pilots have many independent devices working separately confirming they're on the proper heading, approach, glide slope, etc. And interference causing a misreading on one device would not likely cause the same misreading on another unrelated device -- a rogue GPS reading isn't going to bring down a plane when everything else is working.
But one failure of one system never brings down a plane. The RNAV is broken? Check the GPS. GPS is out? Check the compass. Compass is stuck? Look out the window. Foggy? Check the RNAV. There's three or more redundant ways to do anything in a plane.
Your phone might be fine today, or it might be leaking RF ever since that one time you dropped it and an internal shield came loose. It still wouldn't be a problem on an airplane unless a half dozen other things are going wrong for the pilot. It might be a cloudy, rainy day, right about the time he is flying the crazy tight approach into the Hong Kong airport, when a lightning strike takes out one of the engines and the nav radios. And perhaps the mechanic failed to properly seal the GPS antenna connection. At that very particular time a GPS that's being confused by the EM from a faulty phone is not something the pilot needs to deal with.
The thing is that while a series of unfortunate events is extremely unlikely, there are enough flights and planes in the sky every single day, such that the laws of probability are still going to line up the bad stuff every so often. While it would be nice if the pilot asked for the passengers to turn off their phones as a precaution only when he could anticipate difficulty, that would be a lot more convenient, but that's the thing about bad luck: if they could predict all of it, they'd never crash again.
John
The rule is you have to prove it is not harmful.
Yep. And 10 years ago, my father and I tried turning on a laptop inside the single-engine plane on the ground, during engine-warmup/preflight checks.
Buzzing on the intercom, and the RDF/VOR both went bonkers, even when set to local beacons where there was strong signal. Turns out the cheap laptop was unbelievably poorly shielded, leaking RF coming from the screen's backlight and the various major clocks.
Do you really want your life to be endangered by the guy who brings some crappy laptop that isn't FCC/ECC certified onto the plane you're on?
I find it funny that plenty of Slashdotters are HAM operators or 'get' interference, but are absolutely RIPSHIT that they have to turn off their devices while flying. Grow up, and recognize that you have an addiction and entitlement issues. Read a damn book, take a nap, meditate, strike up a conversation. You're not ENTITLED to sit there and surf the net.
Please help metamoderate.
Well, the reason airplanes are not crashing from the sky is that airplanes are not automated. There's a human being who can detect whether or not the messages are reasonable.
For example, I read a recent incident here where a smoke alarm went off in the cargo bay of an airplane. But just for a moment. It would come on and go off intermittently. The pilot reported it to the ground crew who checked out the system and found no problem. The maintenance people believed that somebody probably left a cellphone on in their checked bag.
The plane did not fall from the sky. It arrived at it's destination in one piece. But you now have a pilot who, next time he sees a smoke alarm go off in the cargo bay, might be inclined to ignore it since it's probably a cellphone. And when it isn't, well, I suppose it will be the pilot's fault for not paying attention.
Yes, the Federal Bullshit Bureau. They are the interface between the government and the public.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Boeing thinks there is interference:
"Boeing conducted a laboratory and airplane test with 16 cell phones typical of those carried by passengers, to determine the emission characteristics of these intentionally transmitting PEDs. The laboratory results indicated that the phones not only produce emissions at the operating frequency, but also produce other emissions that fall within airplane communication/navigation frequency bands (automatic direction finder, high frequency, very high frequency [VHF] omni range/locator, and VHF communications and instrument landing system [ILS]). Emissions at the operating frequency were as high as 60 dB over the airplane equipment emission limits, but the other emissions were generally within airplane equipment emission limits. One concern about these other emissions from cell phones is that they may interfere with the operation of an airplane communication or navigation system if the levels are high enough."
"Operators of commercial airplanes have reported numerous cases of portable electronic devices affecting airplane systems during flight. These devices, including laptop and palmtop computers, audio players/recorders, electronic games, cell phones, compact-disc players, electronic toys, and laser pointers, have been suspected of causing such anomalous events as autopilot disconnects, erratic flight deck indications, airplanes turning off course, and uncommanded turns. Boeing has recommended that devices suspected of causing these anomalies be turned off during critical stages of flight (takeoff and landing). The company also recommends prohibiting the use of devices that intentionally transmit electromagnetic signals, such as cell phones, during all phases of flight."
The problem seems to be that anomalies observed in flight are being reproduced in a lab.
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_10/interfere_textonly.html
Spurious RF might not "take down airplanes," but it is not hard to imagine it having an effect on various aircraft systems. For instance, aircraft SATCOM uses 16XX MHz for uplink. I could imagine a poorly designed/tested/repaired 800-band cell phone outputting a second harmonic, which could interfere with this communication. It might not cause the plane to crash, but it could increase pilot workload or prevent important communication with the ground. This is a bit of a contrived example (since SATCOM would not typically be used during takeoff or landing), but still there is no way for flight crews OR passengers to know for sure if their equipment is compatible with each other. We can be even less sure about UNintentional radiators...especially cheap gadgets with switching power. Takeoff and landing are the most dangerous phases of flight - I think a bit of regulation is warranted in this case, especially since the inconvenience is so small. (disclaimer: not an RF engineer, so maybe I just don't understand the issue fully)