71–80 of 80 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would it be overly cynical of me to suspect that the original ban had something to do with the $5 charge for the seat back phone and the new policy has something to do with the $5 seat back wifi?
How about acknowledging that the rules may be overreaching, yet be thankful that the airline industry likes to err on the side of safety?
Now, that's with hundreds of channels running right next to each other in cable bundles. You're talking about tiny emissions from tiny devices, a couple layers of shielding away. There's no way they can anticipate every combination of everything else involved, but I'm pretty sure those cable bundles pose a far greater problem on every flight, every day, than your cell phone ever will. And I'm pretty certain vast numbers of passengers have left their cell phones on during take off and landing, and there's no, zero, zip incidents of a plane falling out of the sky because of it.
But the government has to mandate the most expensive testing program known to man because nobody in a position of decision making is allowed to consider any reasons why an iPad might be different than a raygun or a Van de Graaff generator or a live tiger.
What if they put all the iPads on a flight, and there was still no interference? Could they all be approved after that flight? (Of course, it's a gamble, since a single bad device could ruin the certification for all of them, but I think it's a smart gamble.)
That wouldn't account for destructive interference.
Clearly we need to test all possible permutations.
BUT. Do you really have to claim that you're off to buy a STACK of magazines to read in this time? Are you that incapable of sitting unstimulated in your seat for a few minutes each time you fly?
Does anyone else wonder why they need to actually fly the devices instead of just extrapolating from the electromagnetic interference test results required by the FCC? It feels as if they believe in voodoo rather than physics. Is there a reason they require device specific tests?
In reality, there almost always is."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it possible that 300 passengers using devices at the same time could pose substantially more risk than just a handful of people using devices?
It's possible, but it's also possible that each passenger has ten iPads in their carry-on bag. Will they perform a test flight with 3,000 iPads? Not to mention how many more iPads could be stored in checked luggage.
cost of plane itself + cost of all the human lives on it = many millions, or "priceless", right?
seems cheap in comparison. plus they don't need to perform this test on every plane before every single flight. only once or a few times, per model permutation. If you spread the testing cost across all the operational instances where they'd be de-risked, I bet it would be pennies per flight, at most.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would it be overly cynical of me to suspect that the original ban had something to do with the $5 charge for the seat back phone and the new policy has something to do with the $5 seat back wifi?
How about acknowledging that the rules may be overreaching, yet be thankful that the airline industry likes to err on the side of safety?
And by the FAA spending a 0.1% of what the TSA costs on weather radar at small airports .....