Americans To FCC Chair: No Cell Calls On Planes, Please

jfruh writes "Who says Americans are politically apathetic? The FCC's proposal to allow cellular data — and, if the airline allows it, voice calls — on airplanes unleashed a flood of responses even before the official comment period began this week. The sentiment was overwhelmingly opposed to people talking on phones in flight. Some correspondents spun terrifying hypotheticals about yapping teens, some accused FCC chair Tom Wheeler of flying on private planes and being out of touch with the full-on horror of in-flight chatter, and one person concluded their letter with the word 'no' with letter 'o' repeated 213 times."

Comments

FCC Shouldn't Ban It, But Airlines Should

[jratcliffe]

While I find the idea of being trapped next to someone making a phone call on a plane loathsome, the FCC really shouldn't be in the position of banning things just because they're annoying. If there's no technical/safety reason to ban the calls, allow them. The AIRLINES, on the other hand, really SHOULD ban these calls, and most have already said that they would.

Re:FCC Shouldn't Ban It, But Airlines Should

[Richard_at_work]

I also don't see how a US government organisation can ban the act of speech for a non-safety related reason - surely that would violate freedom of speech?

Once the FCC and FAA concluded it was no longer a safety concern, their remit for control of it expired and the only entities that could ban it on "annoyance" grounds would be the airlines that operate the aircraft.

Re: FCC Shouldn't Ban It, But Airlines Should

[Scowler]

Public libraries often ban talking on cell phones, and not on any safety grounds.

Re: FCC Shouldn't Ban It, But Airlines Should

[Dan East]

Yes, but individual public libraries aren't the federal government banning them wholesale across an entire swath of private property. Individual libraries have the right to make that decision for themselves. Perhaps they would want to provide specific areas where people could use cell phones, thus people that don't want to be around them can simply stay away from that area. Similarly, why couldn't airlines sell seats in specific sections of the plane (the back perhaps?) where cell phone calls were allowed? That shouldn't be up to the FCC since cell phones have been proven to not crash airplanes through their EMF emissions.

Re: FCC Shouldn't Ban It, But Airlines Should

[Sloppy]

but how long until an airline gets sued because a passenger was unable to take an emergency-related call?

If you leave it to the market and then a passenger chooses to buy a ticket on a no-phones airline, then it's the call receiver who is responsible for declining the emergency call. "Our customer wanted to be in a phoneless environment and paid for that, furthermore demonstrating his preference. Sue him for not taking your call."

Furthermore, it's hard to imagine any scenario where anyone could ever have a reasonable expectation for being able to take an emergency call. Even if I fab an extreme over-the-top example (as I, like anyone, would love to do).

Guy happens to be the Last Doctor In The World. He says, "I want to fly on someone else's airplane, but I want to not listen to anyone else talking." So he buys a ticket on a no-phones airline. While waiting in the terminal, he turns off his phone. One second later, the President's wife calls him, and leaves this voice mail: "The President is choking on pizza! What do I do? WHAT DO I DO!?" but since the doctor turned off his phone, he doesn't see the call come in. He boards his flight, oblivious to the coming disaster.

Mid-flight, one of the passengers starts talking to another passenger. The doctor screams, "hey, shut the fuck up!" and everyone quiets down, because you never know when you might want to be on The Last Doctor In The World's good side. The captain makes an announcement over the intercom. The doctor glares, hatefully. He doesn't make a scene, but he writes the captain's name in his no-treatment book. The engines drone on, and he grimaces with discomfort, noting he's never going to treat anyone who works at Boeing, where they make such loud engines.

An hour later, he gets off the plane. He turns on his phone, and sees a bunch of voicemails from the First Lady. He calls her back. "Get your husband to cough up the pizza," he offers, rolling his eyes, but his advice has arrived too late. The president has already asphyxiated to death.

Unfortunately, right after the president's death, a bill arrived on his desk, which would have outlawed mass puppy shredding. It didn't get signed quickly, because it took a while for the then-vice-president to catch up. So one hundred thousand puppies where shredded, while it was still legal to do so. One of those puppies had an important passphrase tattooed on its ear, but now it has been shredded. Without the passphrase, no one was able to stop the nuclear launch that resulted in the deaths of three billion people.

One of the people whose gardener died in the nuclear war, sues Samsung for designing a phone that has an off switch, based on the idea that people HAVE TO receive emergency calls, no matter what anyone (even the owner of the phone) wants.

You're on the jury. What's your decision? If you rule in favor of the plaintiff, Samsung owes someone $3 to replace the plant that the dead gardener never got around to watering. And I will harbor a hypothetical-$3 grudge against you, from now to the end of time. OTOH, if you rule for the defendent, then I agree with you, my friend. What's it going to be?

Re: FCC Shouldn't Ban It, But Airlines Should

[Ol Olsoc]

"But I'm not sure that is banning "speech" as it is about banning "speaking"."

There are probably think-tanks that would pay to have someone with your ability to contort logic into previously unthinkable directions. Also have you considered becoming a corporate attorney?

Doesn't matter. Free speech isn't anything you folks are arguing about. Free speech is not being arrested by the Government for expressing your opinion. Even then, good luck threatening to kill someone, or the famous "Yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater".

Free speech was never about a person's unadulterated right to say whatever they want, whenever they want to, and no response from anyone else allowed.

All of which is to say that if some asshat starts talking on their phone in the plane, and the other passengers beat the bejabbers out of him, the asshat can have them arrested for assault, but his freedom of speech has not been abridged.

No corporate attorney duplicity needed.

Re:FCC Shouldn't Ban It, But Airlines Should

[TubeSteak]

Mod Parent up.

Mod the GrandParent down.
Just off the top of my head, here are two things the FCC regulates because of annoyance:
http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/loud-commercials
http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/do-not-call-list

Has your evening or weekend been disrupted by a call from a telemarketer? If so, you're not alone. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been receiving complaints in increasing numbers from consumers throughout the nation about unwanted and uninvited calls to their homes from telemarketers.

If no-phone-calls is a good public policy, then there's absolutely no reason to leave its enforcement in private hands.
Make it a law and put the weight of the State behind it.

Allow.

[nblender]

Allow people to make phone calls while in-flight... However, they should be asked to step outside for the duration of their phone call.

Re:Allow it...

[Penguinisto]

Nice compromise, but seating space is already at cattle-car tightness now. I can only imagine what it would squeeze everyone down to if you had to accommodate a frickin' room with soundproofing.

Personally, and as a guy who travels on business a lot, I MUCH prefer that cell phone usage remain banned (data usage okay, but no cell usage).

Why? Two reasons:

1) people are annoying enough - imagine 100-200 of them in a tiny cabin practically yelling into their cell phones.

2) I love not having to answer emails or phone calls while in-flight.

Imagine

[Rik Sweeney]

A night flight. The plane is quiet.

Suddenly,

"Yeah, I couldn't sleep... No, they've fed us.... HA HA HA HA HA!!! Yeah, that's right! HA HA HA HA HA!!! I know what you mean and there's that.... HA HA HA HA HA!!!! Do you remember that?... HA HA HA HA HA!!!"

Re:Imagine

[quixote9]

Exactly. So much for it not being a safety issue. Homicides are a safety issue.

Re:Allow it...

[lagomorpha2]

" (data usage okay, but no cell usage)."

The FCC's job here is to create rules to promote safety. If it's an annoyance issue then the airlines should be the ones making rules about it. We don't need the FCC legislating cell phone use in movie theaters and cell phone use in planes can be dealt with the same way - anyone who won't stop talking on their phone in the theater/plane will be made to leave.

Re:Allow it...

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone who won't stop talking on their phone in the plane will be made to leave.

Now there's something we can all agree on!

I hope inflight mobile use stays banned.

[ErichTheRed]

Thankfully I have a shorter commute these days, but my last job involved an hour-and-a-half trip each direction on the train. The thing that bothered me most wasn't the time, the crowded trains, the hours i had to get up in the morning. No, it was the people yapping on their phones. Imagine a 5:50 AM commuter train with totally dead people half-asleep, then some idiot starts screaming into their phone and doesn't shut up for the entire trip. Now imagine that same scenario, but now you're inches away from that idiot crammed into a coach seat for a 14 hour flight to Japan. I fly a fair amount of these incredibly long trips for work, and I think I'd rather poke a hole in my eardrums with a sharp instrument than listen to 14 hours of inane banter or some exec screaming at his subordinate or assistant.

People just don't get that (a) you don't need to shout anymore, and (b) no one wants to hear about the divorce case you're working on, the colon polyp you had removed, your escapades out at the bar last night, your cat, your dog, your kids or any of the large number of conversations I've heard.

The other thing that's nice for the truly crazy business people I know (I'm not one of them) is that airplane time is dead time -- no one is sending you messages, no one can reach you, etc.

cell phone conversations are allowed on trains

[Anonymous Coward]

and i don't find them the least bit annoying.

i think it would be very similar for airplanes.

Re:cell phone conversations are allowed on trains

[PrimaryConsult]

The popularity of QuietCars on trains (even commuter trains now) seems to indicate that they *are* annoying enough...

It's a bit sketchy, but I think you can

[monkeyhybrid]

I've never tried to make a call but I have happily sent texts during a flight before. I can't say I paid much attention to it at the time, but I'm pretty sure I had a good bar or two of reception, at least whilst over land, so I'm guessing a call could have worked ok too. I'm sure the sitting-in-a-metal-tube thing won't help but presumably the windows allow enough RF to pass through.

Also, some of the passengers of 'flight 93' made calls to their loved ones during the 9/11 hijackings.

Re:Allow it...

[DickBreath]

> Wonder how much it would cost to retrofit every [airplane] with a sound-proofed 'room'.

I wonder how much it would cost to outfit that sound-proofed booth with a trap door floor?

Re:More distressing than apathy

[GrumpySteen]

The FCC regulations that banned cell phone usage on planes were based on the idea that the phones EM emissions might interfere with the operation of the airplane's equipment. That has absolutely nothing to do with "regulating behavior they find annoying" and is exactly the type of regulation that the FCC was intended to oversee.

In the time since those regulations were put in place, it's become increasingly clear that cell phones won't cause interference with the plane's equipment. The FCC is now considering revising the regulations according to the new information. This is what they should be doing and it should be encouraged.

In the process of reconsidering those regulations, they asked for input from the public. This is also what they should be doing and it should be encouraged.

It's not the FCC's fault that a bunch of people freaked out and submitted "OMG Nooooo!" comments that had absolutely nothing to do with what the FCC is actually regulating. I feel sorry for whoever has to sort through all of those comments to see if there is anything valid buried in them.