Fliers Must Turn Off Devices, but It’s Not Clear Why

On the other hand, I believe Emerson said something pithy about consistently minding your hobgoblins (or something like that). Or, as hackers are more likely to put it: "The 90% solution is usually your best bet."

That said, if you you really do want to have them take away books and magazines and force everyone to stay awake during takeoff and landing, feel free to write a letter to the FAA.

"Once the interference has been discovered ... the plane doesn't fly again until it can pass an EMC SOFT."

Yet, turning off consumer electronics is enforced by the honor system? Is there something else going on that makes consumer electronics unlikely sources of interference that would justify this lazy approach to safety? Why aren't all of these devices confiscated and locked in Faraday cages?

It just strikes me as odd that failure to pass an EMC SOFT grounds the plane until the issue is debugged, but then they just allow an random passenger to bring any random radio aboard just so long as they promise/remember to turn it off during critical phases of the flight.

That example may sound highly unlikely, but it does happen.

So highly unlikely that an honor system approach is justified?

Nobody is entirely sure how aircraft wings fly - ask 3 aerodynamicists and you get three different answers.

Switching off your phone is a major pain in the butt - a real sacrifice for the modern traveller and yet has no obvious causal link to the performance of the aircraft.

So obviously it serves a ritual purpose. Turning off your phone is a sacrifice to the great sky god who holds up the wings during flight.

See also my theory on "turning it off and on again to appease the god that is windows"

First, it's not just an "honor system," as there is generally at least some effort at enforcement on the part of the flight attendants. I have personally had the experience of having a flight attendant ask me to put away my kindle because I wasn't paying attention to the announcements.

As I've explained elsewhere in this topic, aviation mishaps are almost always the result of multiple factors, where if any one factor had been removed the mishap would not have occurred. "Passenger with unauthorized active RF transmitter" could be one source, but it's probably not going to cause a mishap alone.

In aviation we define "risk" as a combination of probability and severity. You can drive down the risk for a particular hazard by either lowering the probability or lowering the severity. The only way to completely eliminate risk is to not fly, so every flight involves accepting some level of risk. It's really a question of residual risk you're willing to accept balanced against the costs (financial and otherwise) incurred by attempts to further reduce the risk. Several people in this topic have discussed the costs of just the current system of having everyone turn off their phones during critical phases of flight, and complaining that the FAA doesn't apparently care about such things. I disagree with them--if the FAA truly didn't care, they would do exactly what you say: confiscate all electronics at the gate and lock them in a shielded box.

>It just strikes me as odd that failure to pass an EMC SOFT grounds the plane until the issue is debugged, but then they just allow an random passenger to bring any random radio aboard just so long as they promise/remember to turn it off during critical phases of the flight.

Keep in mind that I'm flying in a developmental test environment. That means that we're dealing with a lot of stuff that has never flown before, or are using it in ways it has never been used before. Because of the nature of what we're doing, we already have a lot of risk baked into our flights that an ordinary flight does not have, so we tend to be a lot more conservative about the risk factors that we can control.

[EDIT to add quote for context]

Hmm.. Hope you didn't take offense with what I wrote. I see no personal insult anywhere in that text and certainly didn't intend any. That said:

- I had to remove my shoes at the Ben Gurion airport. Granted, only once so far

- Agreed (scanner)

- Braindead liquid rules still apply (maybe softened vs. the US? I cannot judge that)

And while Israelis have to do the same thing: If I travel with a coworker (we usually arrive separately) they pass all tests right away and have a couple of shortcuts (especially concerning passport control, inbound, for example). My experience with tourists, visitors and my own trips says that - well - foreigners start on the 'Might be a terrorist' scale at 3 out of 10, just because.