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Mobile Phone Use Soon To Be Allowed On European Flights
New submitter jchevali writes: The BBC reports that mobile phone use on European flights is soon to be allowed. This follows official safety agency findings that their use on the aircraft really poses no risk. Details on the implementation and the timeline for changes will depend on each individual airline.
The grass is not always greener on the other side. Take that Eurohippsters!
That cellphones doesn't harm anything in the flight systems since it's mostly shielded. almost to rediculous lengths, except for sources like cosmic radiation.
Having the screaming kids or the fat, sweaty guy next to you is bad enough. Last thing I want is 200 people yapping on their mobile for several hours. Time to start 'Quiet Airlines', no-go for kids and phones.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
The fact that you do not like something does not mean that there should be a law prohibiting it. Airlines can and will manage to set their own policies.
I for one kind of enjoy listening to other conversations. The few times I've been on a bus, it has made the ride much more enjoyable.
While the last time, and only times, I flew was in 1999, my opinion should still count.
The risk... annoyed passengers at people chattering away on their phones in a sardine like environment.
Allow times to make calls for pick-ups and whatnot. Or limit calls to 5 minutes for the whole flight duration. Have authorized time periods and whatnot.
Maybe they (the airlines) will only allow 'silent use'. No voice calls, volume down or headset only etc
Or even separate areas for 'talking' and 'non-talking'
(and a small surcharge on your ticket to specify which)
???
Profit
Sadly the tag has vanished from ./ quite a long time ago or the editor forgot to put it here today.
Considering how many people foget to switch their phone off every day and how much reception of texts or data packets takes places while it's in their pocket, I've always foud it quite astounding that obviously no plane has aver fallen from the sky and it was still considered being a security risk...
That said, social aspects of the issue set aside.
Will there be any reception for mobile phones on many flights? After all the planes will be WAY above any towers. Or does this just mean that people will use their phones for games as they do now and calls when they get close to airports? serious question believe it or not .....
As long as voice isn't enabled I don't have a problem with that. I recently tried wifi on a long haul flight and was quite impressed with the speed of the service. I can see how people might want to have data connection up up in the air (albeit one has to see the extortionate roaming prices airlines will come up with!).
But voice? No thank you. It would quickly become a safety issue because passengers would assault each other.
I'm glad this is happening, and it's shame it took so long - or was ever introduced, really. Stuff like this hurts the public's perception of science. Everybody knew this was bullshit.
There are about 28,000 flights in Europe every day of the year and about 1.2 cell phones for every European. I doubt I've been on a plane in the past 5 years where every passenger over the age of 15 didn't have a phone. I like to think that I'm pretty good about turning my phone off (to airplane mode at least), but I've still managed to forget once during the ~30 flights I've been on in the past 4-5 years. Extrapolate that out, and it's obvious that if a phone could affect a flight, we'd be seeing cases every day. Terrorists would sneak phones onto planes to take them down.
Your average Joe sees "science" being used to support limits on cell phones, they know they're bullshit, so the next time they hear another "science-based" bit of info that goes against their comfort, they'll just ignore it too. Why would they bother, "science" is just BS anyway.
Now, all we need is to be allowed to bring scotch on board of the airplane again and we're living in Europe again and Not mini-usa...
I'm buying stock in companies that manufacture noise cancellation headphones. Last thing I want is someone in close proximity talking on a phone.
Thou knowest airborn cellular phone usage is an affront to the billing gods, and a leading cause of global warming, heterosexuality, full-term births, and capitalism.
Thou must embrace Progress, the Rule of Experts, and full faith in the state!
Balls. Just when I thought the world was fine again.
A fair percentage of people who travel on airplanes are assholes; plain and simple. So to give another tool for these douchbags to continue their assholery is just stupid.
A great move for the airlines would be to de-shithead their passenger lists by banning the use of mobile on the plane. I would happily travel on any airline that had a no cellphone rule for the simple reason that any remaining airlines that let people use their phones would magnetically attract the wankers away from the awesome airlines.
I suspect that there will be magically connection rates but this will just be a dickwad amplifier in that the people who use the phones will be government and large organization types on an expense account and will be ultra fartbreaths while they are talking since the calls will cost so much.
But on a more serious note allowing cellphone use on airlines will be stupendously dangerous seeing that some vigilantes will take jammers with them. While cellphones have been pretty solidly proven not to interfere with the avionics I am fairly certain that a jammer would have a substantially negative effect.
To give an example of just how much of a crap-for-brains type of person I am expecting I will give a recent restaurant experience. There was a guy in a very small restaurant who kept getting calls on his phone that he was not answering on his very very loud phone that didn't have voice mail. So basically the phone was ringing for about 50 percent of the time that I was in the restaurant. The fattened pig of a human being just sat there ignoring the phone and the horrible effect that it was having on anyone else. The owners of the restaurant were there and did nothing (as I would expect most airlines to do). What would this guy do on an airplane at 2am? Let the phone ring for 4 hours straight, or silence it? BTW the guy was not deaf.
I do have a happy ending, when my lunch friend and I went to both drop our 1 star Yelp reviews we saw two others relating to the same incident. The four 1 star reviews made up over a third of the total reviews; smashing the 4 star rating to 2 stars. Cellholes can really piss people off.
We've really gotten wrapped around the axle on this whole electronic devices on aircraft thing. The local oscillator of an ordinary FM radio receiver is 10.7mhz above the indicated frequency... which makes 100mhz on your FM dial 110.7mhz... which meant there was a carrier in the middle of the COM/NAV band that aircraft use. So we had to (understandably) prevent FM radios from operating on aircraft. But thru the years it has turned into all electronics. It's like the "five monkeys with bananas and water" experiment gone wrong. We've gotten so wrapped around no electronics we forgot WHY.