6 ms·

No, they are banned because of concerns about interference with avionics. Unfortunately for the FAA, this has been repeatedly demonstrated to be more or less i

by necubi 14y ago

No, they are banned because of concerns about interference with avionics. Unfortunately for the FAA, this has been repeatedly demonstrated to be more or less impossible, leading to this sort of ridiculous post hoc rationalization. Any sort of rule that singles out electronic devices ("anything with an on-off switch," as the steward will tell you) is inherently going to be ridiculous. The attention argument, or the flying debris argument, apply equally well to any number of allowed things (if anything, electronics tend to be lighter than the books they replace). Ultimately, this was a rule that was made a long time ago, that has long since lost relevance. It should be abolished.

simonh 14y ago
But what about the jobs of honest hard working Americans employed to enforce these rules? If we get rid of this pointless rule, what about all the other time wasting, petty, mindless rules and the workers employed to enforce them? Many of these workers have families and children, and no hope of any other gainful employment in these hard economic times. Who's going to stand up for them? Or something.
- bwilliams18 14y ago
  They still need to serve me drinks and peanuts...and sell me food and alcohol.
- bickfordb 14y ago
  Yeah, it does seem like this rule and a soda machine would pretty much remove the need of economy class flight attendants.
  - toomuchtodo 14y ago
    I always thought just letting flyers pick out their cold beverage at the gate before takeoff would replace flight attendants (domestic; international still serves food).
  - objclxt 14y ago
    There are plenty of rules that require enforcement that are not petty or stupid: requiring seat belts during take off, landing, and turbulence, or enforcing no smoking policies. I am reminded of the discussion here a while back about Airbnb and hotel regulation: some of New York's regulations governing hotels are stupid and petty...but others come out of a genuine desire for safety (like adequate fire escapes and sprinklers). Same with the FAA: some rules are outdated, and silly: planes should be able to cope with personal electronic devices...but others are to ensure previous disasters don't happen again. I'm sure some airlines would happily have fewer cabin crew if the FAA would let them: yes, they can sell in-flight items, but that probably doesn't break even on the cost of employing them.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
omegant 14y ago
Airbus pilot here. Electronic interference in take off and landing is real. It is pretty common and can indeed be pretty dangerous. The fact is that a tablet or smartphone in flight mode is not an issue as aren´t devices that are not transmitting. The biggest problem (maybe the only one) is that when you approach the airport and reduce your speed and altitude, the cell phones begin to receive the signals from ground antennas and start trying to connect again with the maximum power(the airplane body dampens the signals), imagine this taking place with dozens of mobile phones at the same time. Also there is people who tries to call or send a message while in approach, making it worst. While on cruise there is no signal with modern 3g, also you go too fast to lock any tower so you don´t get the interferences. With old analog cell phones it was pretty usual to maintain signal and talk even at 30k feet (they affected flux sensor of the compass though). This heavy transmission from tens of phones at the same time may or may not cause radio communication interferences (the same one you hear when your phone is close to the car radio annoying but not lethal), system computers reboots or complete loss of flight computers (and this can be very scary in bad weather, heavy traffic airport and close to the ground). This has happened to me while in a landing in Paris, not something that I would recommend. Also a friend of mine had all the flight computers, alarms and lights going wild while trying to land at Madrid too. Usually is less dramatic than that, and only a computer or system resets, but you don´t know when or how you are going to face it and how bad will become. The problem with flight modes is that a significant portion of passengers don´t know how to set it. Some of them don´t even know how to power off their phones, with the stewardess having do it 2 or 3 times each flight(improving lately, it seems people begin to know their devices). Maybe with an 3g antenna inside the plane, all the signals could be kept at low levels and this way be able to avoid interferences to the flight equipment.
- nodata 14y ago
  So to put this in perspective, a bad person could crank up their phone and prevent all sorts of safety and assistance systems on a plane from working? Then why ban a bottle of water?
- rvkennedy 14y ago
  While this is valuable information, it is all anecdotal: you're assuming that the incidents you experienced were due to electronic devices, but the FAA has never tested this, so it's a single datapoint where we don't even know how many (if any) passengers had active devices. If the FAA were serious about flight safety, surely they would be testing this to a scientifically acceptable standard. Then, once we have the data, and assuming that there is a problem, phone makers could introduce some kind of "do-not-send" code that planes can broadcast so that phones stay quiet during flight.

by necubi 14y ago

simonh 14y ago

But what about the jobs of honest hard working Americans employed to enforce these rules? If we get rid of this pointless rule, what about all the other time wasting, petty, mindless rules and the workers employed to enforce them? Many of these workers have families and children, and no hope of any other gainful employment in these hard economic times. Who's going to stand up for them? Or something.

bwilliams18 14y ago
They still need to serve me drinks and peanuts...and sell me food and alcohol.
bickfordb 14y ago
Yeah, it does seem like this rule and a soda machine would pretty much remove the need of economy class flight attendants.
- toomuchtodo 14y ago
  I always thought just letting flyers pick out their cold beverage at the gate before takeoff would replace flight attendants (domestic; international still serves food).
- objclxt 14y ago
  There are plenty of rules that require enforcement that are not petty or stupid: requiring seat belts during take off, landing, and turbulence, or enforcing no smoking policies. I am reminded of the discussion here a while back about Airbnb and hotel regulation: some of New York's regulations governing hotels are stupid and petty...but others come out of a genuine desire for safety (like adequate fire escapes and sprinklers). Same with the FAA: some rules are outdated, and silly: planes should be able to cope with personal electronic devices...but others are to ensure previous disasters don't happen again. I'm sure some airlines would happily have fewer cabin crew if the FAA would let them: yes, they can sell in-flight items, but that probably doesn't break even on the cost of employing them.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

omegant 14y ago

Airbus pilot here. Electronic interference in take off and landing is real. It is pretty common and can indeed be pretty dangerous. The fact is that a tablet or smartphone in flight mode is not an issue as aren´t devices that are not transmitting. The biggest problem (maybe the only one) is that when you approach the airport and reduce your speed and altitude, the cell phones begin to receive the signals from ground antennas and start trying to connect again with the maximum power(the airplane body dampens the signals), imagine this taking place with dozens of mobile phones at the same time. Also there is people who tries to call or send a message while in approach, making it worst. While on cruise there is no signal with modern 3g, also you go too fast to lock any tower so you don´t get the interferences. With old analog cell phones it was pretty usual to maintain signal and talk even at 30k feet (they affected flux sensor of the compass though). This heavy transmission from tens of phones at the same time may or may not cause radio communication interferences (the same one you hear when your phone is close to the car radio annoying but not lethal), system computers reboots or complete loss of flight computers (and this can be very scary in bad weather, heavy traffic airport and close to the ground). This has happened to me while in a landing in Paris, not something that I would recommend. Also a friend of mine had all the flight computers, alarms and lights going wild while trying to land at Madrid too. Usually is less dramatic than that, and only a computer or system resets, but you don´t know when or how you are going to face it and how bad will become. The problem with flight modes is that a significant portion of passengers don´t know how to set it. Some of them don´t even know how to power off their phones, with the stewardess having do it 2 or 3 times each flight(improving lately, it seems people begin to know their devices). Maybe with an 3g antenna inside the plane, all the signals could be kept at low levels and this way be able to avoid interferences to the flight equipment.

nodata 14y ago
So to put this in perspective, a bad person could crank up their phone and prevent all sorts of safety and assistance systems on a plane from working? Then why ban a bottle of water?
rvkennedy 14y ago
While this is valuable information, it is all anecdotal: you're assuming that the incidents you experienced were due to electronic devices, but the FAA has never tested this, so it's a single datapoint where we don't even know how many (if any) passengers had active devices. If the FAA were serious about flight safety, surely they would be testing this to a scientifically acceptable standard. Then, once we have the data, and assuming that there is a problem, phone makers could introduce some kind of "do-not-send" code that planes can broadcast so that phones stay quiet during flight.