I’ve long squawked about how ridiculous the airline “safety” rules and procedures are.
Sully recently embarrassed me with his water landing, but at least the data on the danger of electronic devices is coming down on my side.
According to TechDirt, a European provider of in-flight cellphone calls has logged 10,000 calls without incident: no crashes, no interference with planes’ electronics, and no impact on ground networks.
So far there are no statistics, however, on how many thousands of other travelers wanted to kill the people jabbering on their cell phones on the planes.
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Cell phones don’t interfere with avionics, the frequencies are wrong. What using a cell phone moving at 500 mph at 40,000′ used to do was blow out the cell phone network because the nodes weren’t designed to handle the speed and the call hits hundreds of them at a time. Still, having heard at least three people making a call from the gondola at Steamboat Springs last week just to tell them they were on their way up the mountain, I’m happy with a ban on cell phones in planes, particularly on transatlantic flights. Last thing in the world I want to hear on a flight from Denver to Frankfurt is someone saying “wir haben Chicago gerade ueberflogen und das Essen schmeckt scheuslich….”
The airlines could make some extra cash by charging a premium for a “yapping” or “non yapping” section
Tim is right. The FCC doesn’t want the cell network overloaded by the calls. This isn’t as ridiculous as it may first appear. When in a car, a cell signal my touch only three or four towers. When 6 miles in the air, the call may touch hundreds or thousands of towers. And rather than traveling at 70 mph, the caller is traveling at several hundred mph. For a small number of calls, the network may work OK, but for hundreds of calls? The system just wasn’t designed for it.
There are two problems with cell phones on airplanes. One is potential interference with navigation equipment, and the other is disruption of the communications network.
The navigation issue is the safety one – cell phones have the potential to disrupt key instruments. That’s not going to crash a plane, but if the pilots are making an instrument only approach in bad weather and someone makes a cell phone call that disrupts their navigation, that could cause a serious problem.
The communication problem is that the cells that each phone connects to were designed for phones that are on the ground, and thus have limited range. At 35,000 feet, your phone can connect simultaneously to a lot of cells, causing some inefficiencies in the system – which is why the FCC doesn’t like it. Realistically, you need a system where the plane has a receiver that the phones connect to, which then connects you to the phone grid via satellite.
Finally, I value the peace and quiet on flights. This isn’t a train, where you can designate a quiet car – it’s all one cabin.
Even if they allowed cell phones, I’d imagine they’d require them off and stowed for takeoff and landing like all other electronics – given that those two areas are the most critical and dangerous parts of the flight, too.
People have no respect for others. Period. I take a train in the morning, another confined space and loud conversations are the norm. Flying is often a frustrating activity to begin with. We don’t need to have another place for people to show disrespect for those around them. Keep phones off planes.
Re: #3–A study attributed 2,600 annual deaths to drivers distracted by cell phones…so yeah, I guess the government thinks the risk of death is worth allowing people to use cell phones
http://www.livescience.com/technology/050201_cell_danger.html
I think the cell phone ban has to do with two things. One point is shared with other electronic devices like ipods.
The first one is that if something happens during take off, landing, etc., the crew of the plane probably want you to be not tied up with headphones, etc, so they can communicate with you. And I’d be willing to bet that a lot of incidences happen in the first 15 or last 15 minutes of a flight. So they want your ears open so they can get your attention.
The other cell phone specific reason doesn’t have much to do with interfering with flights, but probably interfering with cell towers. When you are in flight, you could be in range of many more cell towers than normal, which could induce a lot of load on the network in terms of trying to route your phone to the nearest tower – which is the nearest?
So the electronics ban does have something to do with your safety, but just not in terms of interfering with the plane. The other reason is so the cell networks themselves don’t get bogged down. Kind of make sense why it’s an FCC regulation and not and FAA one, right?
This is partially conjecture
The Mythbusters tackled this. It’s not a % chance thing, it’s a frequency thing. Cell phones just aren’t working on the radio frequencies that would allow them to interfere with plane communication.
At the same time, the Mythbusters and/or the people they consulted made the good point that… while no phone tested THUS FAR has impacted communication, there’s always so many devices being produced each year that it’s impossible to keep up with testing and ensure you’ve tried every phone on every plane communication.
Plus, there’s always the obnoxiousness factor, which is a big part of it too at this point. Confined spaces make people antsy, and cell phone conversations tend to get loud and obnoxious (whether intentional or not).
Planes are very quiet (which is surprising, now that I think about it) and I think it serves us all to keep them that way.