11–20 of 130 posts
The aircraft is most likely to hit something during takeoff and landing. Cell phones, laptops, and other hard, dense, chunks of metal plastic are, in fact, dangerous when they're flying toward your head.
It doesn't particularly matter whether they pose an electronic threat, policy would be the same.
There's a pretty robust wikipedia article about this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft
compare it to:
"The cost of an accident, should one occur, could be extremely high in terms of human life and the risk is completely avoidable in that no one absolutely needs to eat meat to survive, they can eat vegetables."
I find it hard to believe that a plane's avionics are sufficiently shielded to withstand a direct lightning strike, but one person's phone will crash the plane. I've heard other explanations, too, such as the fact that too many mobile towers are line-of-sight at the same time, and the effective ground speed means you'd hop towers far too often and it'd mess with the phone system. Multiplied times the number of mobile…
That last one is an interesting point, any references to whether it has been tested?
FTA (emphasis added): "Existing rules require cellular phones to be turned off once an aircraft leaves the ground in order to avoid interfering with cellular network systems on the ground."
I find it hard to believe that a plane's avionics are sufficiently shielded to withstand a direct lightning strike, but one person's phone will crash the plane. I've heard other explanations, too, such as the fact that too many mobile towers are line-of-sight at the same time, and the effective ground speed means you'd hop towers far too often and it'd mess with the phone system. Multiplied times the number of mobile…
Another reason I've heard argued by a coworker is that they aren't banning electronics for the sake of interference, but for your attention. If anything were to go wrong during a flight, takeoff and landing are the two times that they want you to be able to react with zero hesitation. If something goes wrong and you have seconds to react, the less things you're fiddling with the more likely you are to survive.
There's a pretty robust wikipedia article about this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft
Now this I can definately belive: "the report concludes that the primary reason for the ban on cell phone use in flight is that neither the FAA nor the FCC are willing to spend the money to perform conclusive safety tests. "
God flight attendant observations? Thats the evidence that is reliable? How could you isolate for all the other factors? "However a few reports state that anomalies were observed to appear and disappear as the suspect device was turned on and off which would indicate a high degree of correlation."
"Degrees of correlation or confidence were not among the data summarized in the report."
"There is no smoking gun to this story: there is no definitive instance of an air accident known to have been caused by a passenger's use of an electronic device. "
This is my point - are we still in 1984? "will exceed demonstrated susceptibility levels for equipment qualified to standards published prior to July 1984"
BBC report: "most of the evidence is circumstantial and anecdotal. There is no absolute proof mobile phones are hazardous."
"Whether interference from small battery-powered devices should have any influence on electronic systems that should be designed to fly through lightning storms without failing is often disputed by critics of the ban."
Another reason I've heard argued by a coworker is that they aren't banning electronics for the sake of interference, but for your attention. If anything were to go wrong during a flight, takeoff and landing are the two times that they want you to be able to react with zero hesitation. If something goes wrong and you have seconds to react, the less things you're fiddling with the more likely you are to survive.
It seems these reasons are made up by rational minds, trying to understand the ban. Like results from "Why the heck is this prohibited again?" pondering, but completely based on speculation.
So unless we can get some facts to back up these claims, I doubt that these replies help the OP. It sounds more like "Been there, thought about it, this is what I/my coworkers could come up with to explain this mistery"?
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.