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FAA Pushed To Review Ban On Electronics
First time accepted submitter sfm writes "Ever tangle with a grumpy flight attendant over turning off your Kindle Fire before takeoff? This may change if the FAA reviews their policy for these devices. The FAA is under extreme pressure to either change the rules or give a good reason to keep them in place. From the article: 'According to people who work with an industry working group that the Federal Aviation Administration set up last year to study the use of portable electronics on planes, the agency hopes to announce by the end of this year that it will relax the rules for reading devices during takeoff and landing. The change would not include cellphones.'"
Takeoff and landing, you're supposed to concentrate on safety instructions which (very rarely) you might need to think about right soon and seriously. Just... put down the gadget for a moment, and join the real and dangerous world of the paid staff.
you must turn OFF your cell phone until we reach cruising altitude, airplane mode is not ok
Which is rather stupid. Most people who know how to put their phones in airplane mode have seen the safety instructions enough times that they could give them for the staff, why not let them keep their cell phones on provided they aren't engaged in communication with them?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Ever tangle with a grumpy flight attendant over turning off your Kindle Fire before takeoff?
No. No, I haven't, but that might be because I'm not so hopelessly addicted to stupid gadgets that I go into withdrawal if I have to turn the damn thing off for the fifteen or so minutes it takes to get the plane in the air.
Normally no consumer system should have any effect on aviation electronics. I always thought even the FAA understood this, and the worry is over electronics that may not be functioning correctly. An extreme example, is that about once a year you can find a story about rescue teams being mobilized because they see an emergency radio beacon signal, only to find out it is a malfunctioning TV or other device (well, appears functional to the user, but something is out of spec with the circuit and EMC goes to heck). While 99.999% of a particular product may be fine, there is concern that someone with one of the exceptionally bad or out of spec devices ends up on a plane. While the chances are rare and unlikely, it becomes a question of what is value of those couple minutes of electronics use during take off, and is people forgoing the electronics use for a few minutes a bigger cost than such a risk. And testing for it would not just be a matter of seeing the a plane works fine with a pile of electronics running in it, but trying to estimate how bad handheld electronics could be.
Our government is required to provide logical, reality-based legislation. Not legislation and mandates built on superstition, witchcraft and rumor. It maybe fine for a short time to prohibit certain things out of an abundance of caution until an answer can be found but now we've had more than enough time, and we have no scientific evidence of any interplay between avionics and solid state mobile devices. All the evidence is anecdotal in nature. This is not sufficient for limiting the freedoms of people.
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These rules are stupid and were based on the fear of the unknown instead of actual studies and evidence.
I have my concerns about cellphones... Not because they'll crash the plane; but because listening to 60 people babble loudly and relentlessly will make me wish that the would...
Anything silent, no problem; but if air travel features the TSA, little kids kicking the back of your seat, and cellphone chatter, it isn't going to be pretty.
NYC is getting billions of federal money to pay for subway repair and other projects
FEMA was out there
Insurance companies were out there
what else was Oblama supposed to do? there are only so many contractors out there. i live outside the flood zone and a wine and cheese shop that was supposed to open months ago cannot because all the contractors are busy with hurricane clean up
if you have flood insurance then your insurance company cuts you a check. if not you go to FEMA and ask for a loan to rebuild your home. this is not the first time NYC suffered flooding like this and FEMA had flood maps available. some people chose NOT TO BUY FLOOD INSURANCE
These rules are overdue for repeal and have been for at least a decade. I used to travel full time as a consultant for years and I can assure that on every single flight there are devices routinely left on and used when they are not supposed to be.
The empirical evidence is plain as day by way of millions of flights every year with every possible phone, game console, tablet that you could imagine that have /not/ crashed. This rule was made out of excessive paranoia and needs to be set aside as the act of sheer absurdity that it is.
If there were any chance that passenger devices of any kind could seriously impact the safety of the plane, then a simple suggestion not to use such devices is ludicrous. Such devices would have to be detected and confiscated before boarding the plane. We don't ask people not to set off the explosives they brought on the plane, we make sure that they don't bring them on the plane in the first place. The fact that people are allowed to bring cell phones on the plane prove that they are not dangerous. If they were, that would be a huge problem - we really do not want planes to fall out of the sky just because of a bit of radio interference. It's a good thing that they don't, so now let's get rid of this stupid restriction.
Have you ever tried to use your cellphone on a plane? Out of curiosity, I did. (Spoiler: the plane did not explode, I did not die.) Reception was lost soon after we got very high in the air. I think I tried it again in mid-flight, but still no signal. This was one phone, not a comprehensive test, but I'd guess that the plane is moving too fast and is too high for most cell phones to get and maintain much of a connection. Plus, the dull roar of the engines in most planes drowns out most conversational tones, the reason children wailing is annoying is because you can hear them over the engines.
Where I'd like to see the FAA ban cell phones is once you have landed, while you're waiting to deplane. "OH HAI! WE JUST LANDED! ARE YOU OUTSIDE? I SAID ARE YOU OUTSIDE? NO, WE JUST LANDED! WAITING TO GET OFF. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, YEAH, WHY DO THEY SERVE YOU SUCH SMALL BAGS OF PEANUTS? SO ARE YOU GOING TO PICK ME UP? NO, I SAID I JUST LANDED! AT THE AIRPORT! ARE YOU GOING TO PICK ME UP? I NEED TO GET MY BAGS! OKAY!"
Fucking text it morons. If not for politeness to the rest of us in earshot who are already impatient to get out of the plane, for efficiency. You can't hear them and they can't hear you, reading is much faster. Well, maybe not for idiots who can't wait until they get off the plane to announce multiple times that they've just landed and need to get their bags and can you pick them up...
You are using low grade private aircraft systems. I know pilots that have cellphone conversations while landing a 737.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If there was any real concern, they would be a lot more vigilant about enforcing the rules. Since anyone can put an active Kindle or cell phone into their bag and the airline doesn't send people around with wands to triangulate the signal, I assume the "danger" is effectively nil.
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> I know pilots that have cellphone conversations while landing a 737.
This wouldn't be the same pilots who missed a audible LORAN transmitter's approach turn signal in the Andes and killed 200 people crashing into a mountain?
Because of course, all pilots are "experts" at what they do and they never make poor choices killing hundreds of their clients.
If it was about distractions, why can I read my dead tree book, or the Sky Mall catalog? My book certainly weighs more than my wife's iPhone, and would be a worse projectile. My kids can play with their plastic toys (as long as they don't look like knives or guns). And the lady next to me can knit while we're taking off. All of these things are worse distractions and projectiles, so don't pretend like there's any logic to these rules. They are capricious and stupid byproducts of a political system gone terribly awry.
OK, cell phones and RC cars, I can see banning. But an e-ink display puts off less noise than wristwatch. For that matter, they have TV screens showing Big Bang reruns on half the airplanes during takeoff and landing. So it's clearly not a distraction or electronic noise issue. Just BS rules to cover somebody's ass.
You seem concerned about somebody's book getting in your way when the plane crashes during takeoff or landing. I'd be more concerned with the fuselage getting in the way of my arteries, or the overhead bins getting in the way of my brain stem. If nothing like that happens during a plane crash, I'd be a pretty happy camper.
FEMA was ready, but the trucks were out of the area
pretty dumb to put your relief supplies into the path of a hurricane where it will strike the worst. the roads being flooded made relief pretty hard
Of course, not building your home below sea level, next to the ocean, in a known flood zone, in a known hurricane zone, protected only by dikes/levees that are known not to withstand such hurricanes ... that helps too.
This should rightly be a Louisiana and New Orleans problem, not a US Government problem. Unless you can tell me why those of us who choose our homes with the slightest common sense should be required to subsidize (taxes) those who don't. I am sorry lots of people make bad decisions. I am sorry that sometimes this causes some real suffering. I am sorry that this typically causes people to get blinded by emotion when they see the sheer horror of the damage done, and they stop thinking rationally because they want to feel sorry.
If I choose consistently to eat more calories than I burn, I will gain weight. Eventually I will put on a lot of excess weight. If this causes me to have a heart attack one day that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't put such strain on my cardiovascular system, I don't expect you to feel sorry for me. In fact the most constructive thing you could possibly do is use my case as an example of what not to do. Then maybe someone else could learn from my failure and not have to experience the same suffering. That would be the actual compassionate thing to do that reduces suffering, not the phony feel-good kind that makes you look like a good person. It is the same with building your family's home in a known flood zone that is below sea level and next to the ocean and known to have inadequate protection.
If that's the fear, then all consumer electronics should be banned from flying, just like guns.
There is no need to ban them when they can be just turned off. And sadly, there are too many consumer electronic devices in use to simply ban them, so the best compromise is to turn them off.
I've seen at least one device interfere. All this "proof" that they don't is just junk science. "We tested 1000 new consumer devices and none of them caused interference, so we've proved that such devices do not cause interference." Right. In comes device number 1001.
The random malfunction of consumer electronics potentially interacting with the comm/nav systems on a commercial jetliner has to be 5-10 orders of magnitude more rare than someone building a portable high-power RF white noise source and leaving it on during takeoff.
Citation required. Pulling numbers out of your ... I'd say. I've seen interference. I've yet to see someone carrying a deliberate jammer, but since the current rules would make that a federal crime, I don't think we need another rule to deal with that. It's the inadvertent radiators (like a broken electronic device) that need to be dealt with, and since the wrong time to test each device is as one boards the aircraft, simply turning them off is the easiest solution.
What the hell is the problem anyway? For fifteen minutes at the beginning and end of a flight you can't use your iWhatever or eWhatsis. Big deal. Life is too short to get bent out of shape because of something so trivial.
The morning news was making a big deal of the fact that pilots can use iPads in the cockpit. This proves how safe they all are, they said. That's not true. It proves that those previously tested iPads aren't likely to cause interference, but more importantly, that if they do they are in the hands of the pilot/copilot who know they are being used and who can immediately turn them off if necessary. "Hey Bob, I saw you turn your iPad on and NAV2 went wonky. Try turning it off..."
Now imagine an iPad in the hands of passenger 32B during a critical phase of flight who turns it on and causes interference. The pilots don't know he just did that or where he is, so they first have to detect the interference and then try to work around it without being able to just turn the interfering device off. Yes, they can use the PA to ask people to turn things off (I've heard this before) but what if this jerk thinks "it's an iPad just like the one the pilot is using, it can't possibly be the cause, so I'll keep using it?"
The news guy also had this part exactly backwards: he asked whether you'd rather have an issue below 10,000 feet where the pilots are directly involved in flying the plane or above that where you're going 600 mph. His answer: below 10,000 feet. BZZZTTT.
Below 10,000', the sterile cockpit rules kick in for a very good reason. It is the time when everyone needs to concentrate on what he is doing -- like flying the plane or looking out the window to look for terrain or traffic. Below 10,000' is where the big iron mixes with the smaller stuff and there is more traffic to worry about. Below 10,000' is where the GROUND is, and where you will find almost all final approach courses and landing zones. Mistakes above 10,000' and in level flight give more time for correction than those at 1,000' while descending to land. Having an ILS or GPS failure while flying an approach is a much more serious issue than one that happens in the flight levels.
As a real pilot I would be glad if you hand over those "pilots" names to the FAA.
On take off and landing left and right seat are dedicated to 1 job and 1 job only. They are not updating their face book status to "YOLO! Crashing plane!".
What you just said is worse than saying "I know pilots who fly 747s drunk!" and is an equally terminable offense.
Also as a note on electronics. Having my heading be off by 30 degrees (this has been documented) is not going to make me crash the plane on take off or landing. It may lead me to flying you to DFW from JFK instead of LAX like you planned, but it will not lead to a plane crash.
The idea is that the electronics can cause distraction during critical phases of flight. No one wants those. It is just a risk with no real justification and accepting a risk with no justification, is just bad risk management.
"I've seen at least one device interfere."
What was it and what did it interfere with. What were the cirmstances? Did you report it to the FAA?