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Airline Industry Remains Divided Over Personal Electronics Usage During Takeoff and Landing
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Oooo. A blog. That guy at CSI needs to get a spectrum analyzer instead of using his finger in the air to measure compounded EMI.
He is correct that if they are all the same devices EMITTING the SAME EMI but we know that all cell phones do NOT emit the same EMI frequency or power.
A like EMI can cancel themselves out.
Not a like can have unexpected results.
There's an awful lot of whining regarding phones, hence my example. Of course this issue is not about social media. Social media is one of many things you can do on a phone. But again, so what if you can't read your little Kindle for 10 minutes during departure? BFD. Pop an Adderall and skim through SkyMall if you're so antsy. It's simple: get on the plane, keep your seatbelt on, and don't argue with the flight crew about petty stuff. If this is too much to ask, there are other, less restrictive modes of travel to consider.
Seriously, every time this topic come up, all I see is 20 pages of:
Attachments
two separate statements.
People CAN live without their tethers.
The second is that electronics do not automatically equal intereference
With that article I linked it does support incidents increasing corresponding with the increase in use of electronic devices. Of course I'm sure there exists some formula to give a more accurate number.
This is a very important point, and the reason why electronics are allowed above 10,000 feet.
It's because at that height, it's assumed that pilots will have more time (and space) to figure out, and react to, an instrument problem.
Non-pilots do not understand how a very minor mistake can (and has many times) cause an accident. They have no idea what the pilots might've had to figure out in the cockpit on a trip that seemed so easy to to the passengers.
GSM buzz, false collision alarms, navigation gear acting wonky... all are things that might not even get reported, but which distracted the pilots.
This is why ASRS reports are important: they're usually the canary in the mine.
Pretty much describes the brain dead tea party, doesn't it... *SNAP* Oh no you didn't! Oh the heck yes I did!!!
I think it is absolutely right that the crew makes sure that nobody is listening to music, working on a laptop, or even talking on the phone during takeoff and landing so that there is no distraction or delay in case of an emergency. I also believe, that more than 300 cell phones, potentially in operation in the back of the plane, can pose a thread to the planes electronics. On the other hand, I can not fully believe, that a single device is capable of doing this. If so, we would have already heared of terrorist attacks with cell phones and these devices would not be allowed on board at all.
The example you give there is a linear increase, not an exponential increase.
The increase in field strength with increasing numbers of devices is certainly less than linear (I described some of this in another post), but it still does increase.
However, the relationship between field strength and statistical risk is very complex, and almost certainly not smooth, so it's very hard to say how the statistical risk increases with device numbers (but it certainly won't decrease).
-- HJKL
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For all the people who say, "you aren't that important, just turn your stuff off". I don't need my phone and I don't need wifi during taxi, take off and landing. However, I do have ALL my magazines and books on my iPad Mini and that is the perfect time for me to get some reading in. So, how about we compromise. No phones and turn wireless off, but eReaders are OK?
I turn all my electronics off, and I also pay close attention to the safety procedure. Maybe that´s another reason for why all the tech needs to be turned off, to get people to focus for a second? If something goes horribly wrong during take off or landing, I don´t want to find the person sitting next to the emergency exit playing angry birds..
It's reasoning like this that is truly scary when you will just blindly follow orders without ever questioning whether they are based in sound reason. The airlines themselves can't give a straight answer as to why this is necessary. Learn to think for yourself.
When you are a passenger on an airliner you are absolutely required to follow orders, whether you like or understand them or not. That is the law. What is truly scary is that so many people are either ignorant of this requirement or choose to ignore it. You might want to learn to pay better attention and give your knee jerk anti-authority gig a rest.
"Hello, Sally? It's me. Just wanted to give you call before we reach cruising altitude. I know it's cool, right? Anyway, could you speak up louder. That annoying pilot is talking in the background again.… Something about seat belts and turbulence… Bla. Bla. Bla. Anyway, what songs are you listening to right now? What's that? Oh, I need to hang up. It seems I'm sitting next to an air marshal."
So you're advocating a society where every individual is allowed to make up their own minds about which rules to follow and which not (irrespective of whether or not they have any actual understanding of the issues involved)?
Now *that's* a scary prospect.
Do you apply this just to the rules about flight, or society's rules in general.
-- HJKL
It's not about making up ones own rules - it is about thinking about why things are and especially when it starts to become obvious that certain policies are in place without sound reasoning, that we discuss them in the proper forum and press to change them. Note that I am not, have never, and will never advocate for taking this up as a passenger on the airplane. But that is because that is not the proper forum. The media and the public discussion space is, however, and that is why it is scary when people try to demand you keep quiet and follow the rules with no room for discussion. There have been and are plenty of societies like that. Thankfully mine is not one of them.
The problem with this reasoning is when you are fundamentally wrong but insist that your opinion is just as valid as any other. If you don't get what I am talking about, you need to read back through the thread. The situation is not so cut and dried as you imply. So don't be talking about how others are "blindly following orders" unless that's what you meant to say.
FWIW, I think the rules will be changed. But as I have also said several times before, they should not be changed because poorly informed people howled on message boards.
Exactly.
I strongly suspect that when enough study is done we'll find that there are ways of regulating device usage which allow more freedom than at present while maintaining safety.
However, the point is that my suspicion is not sufficient to justify changing or ignoring the rules - proper study is needed.
Bear in mind I do have some expertise in this area - I'm an electronic engineer who has designed avionics, both civilian and military, and I've been involved in certification of electronic devices of all kinds for both immunity and emissions for decades. Despite that, I don't assume that my gut feel should override the current regulations, and I have no time for those with no technical expertise who feel that theirs should.
-- HJKL
In that case, comments like "learn to think for yourself" aren't really part of a constructive debate on the subject.
Does it ever occur to you that those who disagree with you *are* actually thinking for themselves, but just happen to have come to a different conclusion?
If you're advocating informed debate on the subject, while obeying the rules in the meantime, then I'm wholeheartedly in support of that (the emphasis has to be on "informed", however).
-- HJKL
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Its weird that when I flew up to Providence last week, there was a 15-20 minute delay since there were a few planes in front of us and the stewardess informed everyone that we are able to still have our portable devices on until the capitan another announcement was made to power them off. I'm sure this is a up to the capitan's discretion as well.
But then again, you assumed that I fly US Airways.
I did so because you appear to live in Philadelphia, which is essentially USAir's base of major operations. So its hard to fly anywhere from Philadelphia and not use US Airways (unfortunately).
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No, but they should be changed because a mass experiment has already been conducted and is being conducted every day. As dozens if not hundreds of devices are left "on" (whether purposely or not) at all stages of flight. And, other than just a few merely anecodotal reports that are a miniscule number so as to be entirely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, there is no danger from the use of the devices.
Clearly, if there was, based on the mass experiment going on every day for years and thousands upon thousands of flights, we would know it already. In fact, if the devices were such a danger and because of the impossibility of policing the actual "off" of the device when below 10,000 feet, you should be advocating IMMEDIATE ban on all such devices on-board until there is "clear" determination one way or the other. Safety first -- right?
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What she meant was you are not thinking for yourself if you merely meekly follow rules that are patently absurd.
And Mr. rule follower, how many times have you gone over the speed limit?
I usually take the time to entertain myself with some of the hilarious products for sale in the SkyMall mag during takeoff and landing
You don't seem to understand statistics either. EMI is a real physical phenomenon. That's why there is substantiated fear of electronic devices causing interference. But so far, there's no proof of low power devices causing interference. And it'll be impossibly difficult to do a case study showing interference because the probability is so low, it will require many (thousands to millions) examples before you see interference. This is still significant because there are millions of devices out there. What part of what I'm saying is contradictory or hard to understand? And BTW, plane crashes are rare, but plane instruments behaving strangely and attributed to EMI is not.