How many flights take off or land with all passengers and crew members in full compliance with the current rules? Close to none.
Say commercial planes have 60 passengers/crew member in average. 5 don't have any devices (small kids). Of the 55 passengers that have one or more devices, maybe 30 turn off their devices as they are told, 15 put them on airplane mode and 10 don't give a shit or just forget it.
If there are 20 million flights per year there have been some 400 million flights in the 20 years where cell phones have been common. 400 million flights of which 99 percent have flown with some passengers' phones turned on. Has there ever been a single flight accident due to cell phones? Just one?
As newer airplanes are better shielded and old ones are taken out of service, the number of reported incidents have dropped in recent years down to 1-2 per year, which isn't much given the massive increase in PEDs and number of flights.
For the same reason the above message cites as reasons to think the rules were always bunk, the "reported incidents" are also likely to be bunk. It is very unlikely that any one passenger's electronics are the only electronics left on, and therefore very unlikely that the guy who gets berated for leaving his iPod on is causing any problems.
So you think that all the reports dating back to the 60s when superhet transistor radios appered, are likely bunk?
Wouldn't that imply a worldwide, secret pilot conspiracy, especially with incidents where the pilot has been able to reproduce the interference by asking the passengers to turn the device back on?
It's certainly very unlikely that an iPod will cause any problems. That doesn't mean it's physically impossible, as many people seem to think. Which is why I recommend reading the FAA report, which goes into a lot of detail on exactly what considerations they've taken, the risk analysis and why they are changing the rules now.
Some people believe anything from a government agency is wrong and that there aren't smart, capable people doing their jobs on the other end. Of all the things with air travel to pitch a hissy fit over, this one has always comes across as the silliest to me. Things really are going down the tubes if you can't be bothered to not look at your piece of glass for a minutes.
> Things really are going down the tubes if you can't be bothered to not look at your piece of glass for a minutes.
Every time this comes up, somebody's got to get snooty about Kids These Days and Their Attention Spans and Facebooks and Pokeymans.
All I really want to do is read a book during takeoff and landing. Reading is still a thing mature, responsible people do, right? Thanks to ever-decreasing passenger and storage space, it can be a genuine pain to fit even a mid-size paperback into my carry-on luggage in such a way that it's easily accessible during flight, especially for big, tall folks like me. It's much easier all around if I can read a book on my phone, which I have to have with me anyway; or, for some people, a slim tablet or e-reader is an easier fit.
But no, I can't do that (yet). I have to either cram a book in there somewhere, or spend 20+ minutes with nothing to distract me from the heat and the cramps and the screaming babies but vapid seat-back magazines. I know it's not the end of the world, but it's one more frustration piled on top of an already deeply frustrating and dehumanizing experience. After paying hundreds of dollars for the privilege of getting treated like a criminal suspect and then packed into a can like a sardine, it's not unreasonable to keenly desire a little bit of comfort and distraction, is it?
I agree with you, and I hope that lighter devices like ebooks and phones will be exempted eventually. Personally I always opt for a window seat and spend all that time looking outside enjoying the view of other airplanes. So in short, I'd recommend becoming an aviation geek, that will do a lot to distract you from all those annoyances. :)
Usually people say "minutes" when they are talking about time intervals of several minutes. The period you cannot use electronics is from the time the cabin door closes to the moment the plane reaches some arbitrary height on take off and the reverse sequence on landing. This can easily be anywhere from half an hour to several hours e.g. if the flight is delayed it will just stand at the gate with the closed door waiting for clear. You cannot use any electronics during that time.
You are responding in the context of a rather simple, factual argument ("How bad can these devices be since common sense shows they're already on during takeoff anyhow?") with first a political attack, then an emotional attack. Was this really a helpful post?
I've never switched off my devices during take-off or landing because if it actually risked any damage then they'd be screening people before they board.
That would have made a pretty funny punchline to a sketch. Suspicious looking guy (better band of suspicious looking guys) getting the full TSA workup/cavity search etc. Finally gets on board, everyone watching him suspiciously etc. Some sort of minor tussle with obvious plain clothes security who's reseated next to him by a concerned stewardess. Etc. When it's time to take of he fakes turning on airplane mode/powering down when placing it into the seat pocket. He smirks knowingly, closes his eyes and dreams about his field of virgins.
That's a very weird view of things. Do you really think this rule exists without a reason? Why not just follow the rules and turn your devices off, it's not going to hurt you, but a crash could.
Some might find, on the other hand, that it is a very weird view to not question rules before obeying them. For many readers here, there has no doubt been some awareness of the questions surrounding these flight rules, since this sort of topic (it's about our gizmos!) is going to be front-and-centre for many of us.
My understanding was that it hasn't to do with phones being turned on per se, but rather one's attention at the moment the flight is the riskiest: at take off and landing.
The rationale was that when you're playing on your device, you're paying less attention to the crew and what's around you, which can be problematic in case something bad happens and you need to react.
Well, I always heard that the problem was rapid handoffs between towers causing a lot of extra load on both the cell network and the phone itself. I can tell you anecdotally that on a few of occasions I haven't put my phone in airplane mode during a flight, and it seems to drain the battery muck more quickly than normal.
My understanding is that the problem isn't with the speed of the handovers, but rather with the fact that the horizon is a major block to radio signals, and the horizon is much farther away when you're at altitude.
Older networks were designed around the fairly reasonable assumption that a cell phone would only ever be able to talk to adjacent cells, because anything farther away would be over the horizon. So you might be able to talk to both A and B at the same time, but you couldn't talk to C without first losing contact with A.
Raise the phone a few thousand feet in the air and this assumption goes out the window, confusing the network. There's an amusing story of a pilot who called up his family to let them know he was almost home and ended up getting billed for the call (at expensive 80s rates) a bunch of times because several different towers all thought they were running the call.
> Older networks were designed around the fairly reasonable assumption that a cell phone would only ever be able to talk to adjacent cells, because anything farther away would be over the horizon
That can't possibly be true. Spectrum re-use in distant sites could in theory have some effect on the call but differences in signal strength would make significant effects unlikely.
Also, that story about the pilot must also be apocryphal. A handover is a handover, and there is only one "winning" decision. Not to mention that CDRs don't work that way.
Lots of civil aviation pilots use mobile devices in the air without problems for the user or network.
You may be right about the story, but I don't really see the obstacle to it happening. If you initiate a call in the air, you could easily not be able to communicate with the cell directly below (since they don't radiate much signal upwards) while being able to talk to two that are adjacent to it. Since those two cells would never have a reason to communicate in normal operations, confusion ensues.
I know that lots of pilots use mobile devices now, but we're talking ~30 years ago.
I quite often get early morning flights (e.g. I got a 05:50 on Monday) - usually by the time the flight takes off I am already sleeping. Nobody has every tried to wake me up so that I pay attention to take off or landing.
this seems valid to me - they put just as much emphasis on ensuring your window shade is up (for post-crash hazard identification) to electronics being switched off.
It's likely due to attentiveness should you need to evac
AFAICT, they tell you to put the window shade up during landing in order to wake people up and thus to get out of the seat and off the plane as soon as possible. I've never had them ask to open window shades at night (possibly because they're not closed).
Yep, if you read the FAA position, that's the idea. The risk wasn't seen as huge, but since there was a possibility of interference the trade-off seemed reasonable. Just one of the many small things done to improve safety.
Say commercial planes have 60 passengers/crew member in average. 5 don't have any devices (small kids). Of the 55 passengers that have one or more devices, maybe 30 turn off their devices as they are told, 15 put them on airplane mode and 10 don't give a shit or just forget it.
If there are 20 million flights per year there have been some 400 million flights in the 20 years where cell phones have been common. 400 million flights of which 99 percent have flown with some passengers' phones turned on. Has there ever been a single flight accident due to cell phones? Just one?