Never really understood this "we can't enforce the rules because people routinely ignore the rules" attitude. This should be dead simple on an airplane, where the airline knows who each passenger is by seat. So have one flight attendant make one pass down the aisle warning everyone to put away their phones, then have another one follow a minute or so later just making note of which seats are still using their phones. No-fly-list them all later. After this policy became known, people would be strongly incentivized to get with the program.
Even when there was a rule that cell-phones were supposed to be turned off, studies showed that 20-25% of cell phones were still active (Possibly forgotten in pockets) - wasting time, energy, traveler patience, on something that was entirely theater (I don't believe there was ever a single incident associated with an active cell phone - which makes sense given the 10s of thousands per day that were powered on during takeoff) - seems like the worst possible tradeoff ever. The "No cell phone use during takeoff" or "No mobile phone use during flight" (China Air used to do that - very, very annoying) - bureaucracy flex just because the could.
I think the "no cellphones" rule is about minimizing distractions during critical phases of flight, not because a phone's radio is going to do damage to the aircraft. So a phone on but sitting in someone's bag is not the end of the world.
> the "no cellphones" rule is about minimizing distractions during critical phases of flight, not because a phone's radio is going to do damage to the aircraft
The cell-phone "ban was put in place because of potential interference to wireless networks on the ground" [1]. The distraction argument started making its rounds after the interference hypothesis was debunked.
Aircraft electronics were also a commonly given reason for a time. And as for distracted ions there was a period when you could read a physical book but not a Kindle.
No distraction? Do you need sub 500ms response time? I'm pretty sure that even someone watching a movie with noise canceling earphones was aware of an issue just because of physics…
