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

[interkin3tic]

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...

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' .

Re:Avionics

[Obfuscant]

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.

on the other hand

[nozzo]

I was on a flight just coming in to land and the guy next to me answered his ringing phone - I almost grabbed it off him and stamped on it but as I'm British I would rather the plane went out of control and die in a fireball than to make a fuss. Other people tutted at him.
However nothing happened and here I am typing this today!

Re:Not the technology

[0123456]

Having experienced a runway overshoot, the issue is that things tend to go flying around the cabin in a really nasty way, I don't want my teeth knocked out by the tablet that was previously sitting in the lap of the kid three rows in front of me.

But you'd presumably be quite happy to have them knocked out by a hardcover book?

Either make the rules apply to anything that could go flying around a cabin, or stop making me turn off my Kindle so I have to read a book that weighs five times as much instead.