121–130 of 130 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Need to make a short urgent call? Get up, go to the bathroom (which is conveniently sized like a phone booth), make your call, take a piss while you're at it, go back to your seat.
How long before there are signal detectors in the toilets alongside the smoke detectors?
I'd like to know what drove the relatively recent policy shift around demanding that phones and other devices be "completely off" at takeoff and landing, with airplane mode deemed insufficient. From a visual survey of people turning their phones on later, this prohibition seems to be obeyed mostly by one teenager on JetBlue with an iPod once.
I've noticed exactly the opposite on recent flights between NZ and Australia -- they're now a lot more tolerant about having mobiles in flight mode (and specifically say so in the pre-flight announcement) and they let you turn your phone on as soon as the plane has landed. Previously you had to wait until you were "well inside the terminal".
I flew for the airlines. The problem is not your everyday takeoff and landing. The problem arises when the weather deteriorates to near zero visibility and the crew is relying on instrumentation to find that strip of pavement, at 130 knots. Instrument approaches rely on a narrowing volume of radio signals, the closer one is to the runway. The tighter the signal, therefore, the greater the deviation should something g…
Isn't the avionics room under the cockpit shielded to sustain operations through lightning storms, signals bouncing off the ionosphere, solar flares, etc.? I've flown commercially with my phone left on and privately in Cessnas and I haven't experienced anything negative. My dad's a pilot too by the way and he said that there's no supporting evidence, but this is a just small rule so might as well comply.
I flew for the airlines. The problem is not your everyday takeoff and landing. The problem arises when the weather deteriorates to near zero visibility and the crew is relying on instrumentation to find that strip of pavement, at 130 knots. Instrument approaches rely on a narrowing volume of radio signals, the closer one is to the runway. The tighter the signal, therefore, the greater the deviation should something g…
> But how do you explain that to the traveling masses? I think this has a lot to do with the whole "turn every device off" thing. Keeping aggravation levels down, with tired and stressed passengers, with a large mix of cultures and languages, means that it is much easier to say: everything must be turned off. Otherwise you get into 200 discussions about which devices are allowed, and you have to verify each one.
Thus verifying each one is not going to tell the whole story.
Mythbusters did a great show on this problem. Here's a link to the results of the show: http://mythbustersresults.com/episode49
Thanks for that I was really hoping that Mythbusters had tested it. "It was found that cell phone signals, specifically those in the 800-900 MHz range, did intefere with unshielded cockpit instrumentation. Because older aircraft with unshielded wiring can be affected, and because of the possible problems that may arise by having many airborne cell phones "seeing" multiple cell phone towers, the FCC (via enforcement t…
I flew for the airlines. The problem is not your everyday takeoff and landing. The problem arises when the weather deteriorates to near zero visibility and the crew is relying on instrumentation to find that strip of pavement, at 130 knots. Instrument approaches rely on a narrowing volume of radio signals, the closer one is to the runway. The tighter the signal, therefore, the greater the deviation should something g…
Isn't the avionics room under the cockpit shielded to sustain operations through lightning storms, signals bouncing off the ionosphere, solar flares, etc.? I've flown commercially with my phone left on and privately in Cessnas and I haven't experienced anything negative. My dad's a pilot too by the way and he said that there's no supporting evidence, but this is a just small rule so might as well comply.
The wiring is shielded to an extent but there is no special safe room for the avionics. A lot of it is in the nose, right in front of the crew. It is, after all, a very thin tube of aluminum we are all shooting around in. Weight is something to be avoided.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They take bottles of water or cans of coke off you because you might be able to crash a plane with one. They don't take your mobile phone off you, ergo they can't be that dangerous.
Your unspoken premise is that the FAA 1) Cares about safety (more than they care about appearing to care), and 2) That they know what they're doing.
That said, the FAA is the best and safest organization in the world, when it comes to doing what they do. It is bureaucratic, bloated and byzantine and I would take them over any other institution on this side of the Milky Way, any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Part of the problem is, everyone wants cheap tickets AND the best service. One of my advisors had a sign outside his door. It read: Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope. Why force people to turn off their kindles but not close their books?
Last time I checked, paperbacks don't have cellular radios.
They always say, "anything with an on/off switch."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your unspoken premise is that the FAA 1) Cares about safety (more than they care about appearing to care), and 2) That they know what they're doing.
FWIW. I never met someone, who worked for the FAA, who couldn't end my career because they were having a bad day. Pilots feel about FAA officials the way they feel about doctors. That said, the FAA is the best and safest organization in the world, when it comes to doing what they do. It is bureaucratic, bloated and byzantine and I would take them over any other institution on this side of the Milky Way, any day of th…
That's a big part of it. The other part is the picking. How can I, or the average person, judge the efficacy of safety protocols? I'm sure there are plenty of well-meaning people who invest enormous effort into precautions that are completely invisible to me. But I also know that the cheapest form of employment insurance is being visibly indispensable, which would tend to subsidize highly visible actions regardless of efficacy.
Then you can factor in moral hazard; people take more risks if they feel more safe. This means that if something increases safety, but less than you'd imagine, mandating it can increase danger. e.g. if drivers thought that seatblets made them 99% less likely to die, when the real number was 10%, you'd naturally expect more fatal accidents with more people driving as if their risk of death had dropped by two orders of magnitude.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW. I never met someone, who worked for the FAA, who couldn't end my career because they were having a bad day. Pilots feel about FAA officials the way they feel about doctors. That said, the FAA is the best and safest organization in the world, when it comes to doing what they do. It is bureaucratic, bloated and byzantine and I would take them over any other institution on this side of the Milky Way, any day of th…
Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two. That's a big part of it. The other part is the picking. How can I, or the average person, judge the efficacy of safety protocols? I'm sure there are plenty of well-meaning people who invest enormous effort into precautions that are completely invisible to me. But I also know that the cheapest form of employment insurance is being visibly indispensable, which would tend to subsidize hi…
There is plenty of window dressing in what the travel industry does. A large part of it is because people want to see something being done. It makes them feel better. No matter how small or inconvenient.
The real safety measures are what we don't see or hear about. Every accident that doesn't happen is not JUST luck. It is the end result of a well thought out and executed process.
Is there room for improvement? Of course. But it beats anything else out there by open lengths.