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Airline Industry Remains Divided Over Personal Electronics Usage During Takeoff and Landing
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I'm refering to the time when air traffic control gives the pilots the go ahead to take off and/or land. I don't know about your experiences, but if there is a delay for take off, an announcement is made that portable electronic devices are permitted until another announcement is made that informs us to shut them off.
No its trying to be an intelligent society. Rules should have some basis in reality. Not just a blanket ban for no real purpose.
Do you think most people really power off their devices -- they just click it into stand-by mode (so the screen goes blank). Or they just stow it away, without doing anything. In either case its still on.
So the simple announcement to power off devices does nothing. There is no difference if I'm looking at my device, or it is in the same state in the seat pocket. Therfore, the rule is ridiculous and unenforceable and lacks any merit, since it now has been tested million of times (every flight every day).
That's what we did in the old days before all these new-fangled gadgets. And we LIKED it.
Admittedly people were less fat in the old days.
If the story from the regional airliner is true, all planes with similar avionics need to be immediately grounded. Obviously it is complete BS, but if the FAA believes it at all, they need to pull the certification of any equipment involved.
There have been good explanations here justifying the requirement for turning off the device completely instead of just sleep or airplane mode, but I still don't get why this applies to landing and take-off only.
If devices interfere with the plane's electronic system (or compass as was apparently experienced), why not ban devices during the whole flight?
If devices interfere with the plane's electronic system (or compass as was apparently experienced), why not ban devices during the whole flight?
Only on a major delay, where you are not in an actively moving line to take-off. C'mon you fly out of Philly on USAir I presume.
You are told to turn off your devices when the cabin door closes and keep it that way until you reach 10,000 feet. If there are 15 to 20 planes ahead of you, you could taxi for an hour to even take-off (not to mention reach 10,000 feet).
Pay closer attention next time you fly.
From gate to cruising altitude *is* typically in the 10- to 20-minute range, but sometimes exceeds half an hour, occasionally reaches an hour around peak congestion times, and in some *really* bad cases (which resulted in new airline regulations a few years back) has reached upwards of 3 hours. I seem to recall there was a particularly bad incident where the passengers were stuck aboard their plane waiting for takeoff for over 4.5 hours.
The wait at the *end* of the flight tends more strongly toward the lower end of the spectrum, since you can juggle planes to *unload* them a bit more freely, you just have people suddenly needing to change concourses or terminals for their connecting flight, rather than walk to a nearby gate.
Entitlement? Not really. Doesn't fit into any known definition of the word. I suspect you don't fly much. If you fly between any busy US airports, the electronics off portion of the flight can easily go over an hour. My Kindle is no danger to the aircraft. Why can't I keep reading my book? Is that entitlement?
If my kindle is a danger to the plane, we are doomed.
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Yesterday the no electronics time leaving Boston was about 35 minutes. Landing in Dallas it was 25. This was average to short in both cases.
If the actual incident rate were 1/10,000, or even 1/1,000,000, there would be hundreds or thousands of *confirmed* incidents every year.
dude -- come out of your bunker. And for the billionth time, where do you get "10 minutes". Try closer to an hour at most airports (from pushback at the gate, taxi, wait in take off line, to 10,000 feet. Please try to get out more.
And I suppose you don't get in a car. 40,000 people per year die in car crashes each year. So you should just stay out of vehicles -- too dangerous.
Actually, a few people in this very thread *have* used the "fall from the sky" or "fall out of the sky" rhetoric.
Not sure what airline you were on, but that has NEVER happened to me and I fly twice a week.
In fact the opposite last week, delayed after the gates closed for an hour for some mechanical problem and the attendants kept running down the aisles yelling at us to turn our devices off.
LAME
But that is impossible to enforce. No flight attendant will inspect every electronic device. Out of sight out of mind.
I guarentee you that on EVERY flight today, there are many many many electronic devices on during take off and landing. People just put them away, they don't turn them completely off (if they even put them away).
Annoyance and anger affects mental health, which ultimately affects physical well being.
Crying babies and loud phone chatter affects health of others.
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D battery devices and "butterflies" do not apply.
So you disagree with the current rules and agree with the politicians. Current rules prohibit using any electronic devices, even ones in airplane mode. No one is proposing allowing people to use devices with transmitters turned on during take-off and landing.
Even if they were, if the avionics are sensitive to low RF output from a PED, we will need to go ahead and ground the entire commercial aviation fleet.
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I have survived a couple hundred flights where I forgot to turn my iPad off. *hangs head in shame*
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You know you proved the opposite point of what you were trying to prove. If any nut can make a small PED that will bring down a plane. The planes are the problem, not the people. By the way, I don't actually believe this is the case, and that is why the whole argument is silly.
I always "forget" to turn off my devices. Its just more safety "theater" like the TSA nonsense.
I never assumed the rule had much to do with interference, but rather more of making sure during those times that people are alert and paying attention. Take off and landing can be some of the most dangerous times. Assuming there is any true electrical interference then those are also two key times you want the instruments to be performing spot-on.
Don't feel bad. According to the statistics in the article, 40 or more people on every 737 (on average) leave something on. That is something with a transmitter by the way, not just a Kindle. 29,000 commercial flights a day go off without a hitch. 30% of passengers report leaving a cell phone on. There is not a single confirmed incident....
Shoot I never turn off my Kindle either.
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ban books ?
1. Composite aircraft nowadays have copper meshes embedded in the composites to mitigate lightning strikes. That acts as a faraday cage as a side effect. But in any event, that inverse square rule makes outside RF sources largely moot.
2. In-cabin EMI is not additive, also because of the inverse square rule.
I don't even know where to begin with your sad rebuttal. The device being in Airplane mode with the screen OFF is "powered down". You surviving a small number of flights does not PROVE it is safe.
I don't even know where to start on your post and the serious logic errors it has.
]It's really simple. Regardless of whether FAA/airlines allow people to use their electronics there is no way to control what exactly they are using.
Sure, the rules may state otherwise, but when 30% of airline passengers *ADMIT* to using, or not turning off their devices, it demonstrates just how much sway those rules hold over actual reality.
My arguments...
1. If the iPhone interferes with aircraft navigation system, then the iPhone is in serious violation with the FCC. Why did the FCC not do anything about this?
2. The pilot's claims of iPhone making their compasses going haywire doesn't have any solid proof... In fact there's no way to prove it. I think this is a lame excuse for mis-handling the aircraft and this is what they came up with to cover up the fact that they went several miles off-course.
3. Doesn't the flight crew make sure that no phones are in use during take off? At 9K-feet... that's still at climbing height... how does a flight attendant walk around in the cabin and "pursuade" a passenger to power down his phone? And how does all this all get written all together? The flight attendant and the pilot were not supposed to be aware of each other's action during climb time... how did they know shutting down the phone and stopping "haywire" happened at the same time?
1. If the iPhone interferes with aircraft navigation system, then the iPhone is in serious violation with the FCC. Why did the FCC not do anything about this?
2. The pilot's claims of iPhone making their compasses going haywire doesn't have any solid proof... In fact there's no way to prove it. I think this is a lame excuse for mis-handling the aircraft and this is what they came up with to cover up the fact that they went several miles off-course.
3. Doesn't the flight crew make sure that no phones are in use during take off? At 9K-feet... that's still at climbing height... how does a flight attendant walk around in the cabin and "pursuade" a passenger to power down his phone? And how does all this all get written all together? The flight attendant and the pilot were not supposed to be aware of each other's action during climb time... how did they know shutting down the phone and stopping "haywire" happened at the same time?
Complete and utter nonsense. I work with the calibration of the most sensitive magnetometers you can buy at any price. We notice when the train yard half a mile away moves a car. Yet there are typically 3-4 active cell phones in the room during any given step in our operation. The effect falls off so rapidly that it is a total non-issue unless the phone is sitting ON the magnetometer.
At that point who can tell if it's the mass of the phone or the EMI?