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.'"

Comments

Avionics

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who works with Comm/Nav systems for aircraft, let me be the firs to say:

Good. Nothing you have in your possession is going to adversely effect any of the systems used for take off and landing. These rules are stupid and were based on the fear of the unknown instead of actual studies and evidence.

Re:Avionics

[cwebster]

As someone who works in front of the door that says "Authorized Personnel Only" on airplanes, let me throw my 2 cents in.

The only interference I've personally experienced is that infamous noise TDMA and GSM phones make when transmitting data. I could hear the interference anytime myself, my copilot, the flight attendant or anyone in the first 3 rows of the airplane left a phone on and I had the crew audio selected on my audio panel. No effect on the com or nav radios.

The real reason for the ban on portable electronic devices (the cell phone ban dates back to an FCC reg on the adverse effect of having an old-school cell phone at altitude where it could see many towers) is not to protect against interference, it is to protect lives in case of evacuation. If a plane is going to have a survivable accident it is very likely this will occur as a botched takeoff or botched landing, and in these cases you have on the order of a hundred of seconds to get out of the plane before you cook in the fire or succumb to the smoke. Personally I think that people can close a laptop and get up and out of a plane, but past accidents suggest that people will instead close that laptop, attempt to retrieve its case/bag, put it away and perhaps get other bags out of the overhead before evacuating a burning airplane (see the air france overrun in canada a few years back). This is more of a problem with peoples mindset when it comes to protecting property when faced with certain loss, but I think that needs to be addressed before we lift the ban on portable electronics below 10k' .