Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
One thing that may be more important then interference is the effect the use of electronics have on evacuating the plane during an emergency. Pretty much the only time you have a chance to survive a crash is during takeoff and landing. Being able to leave the plane quickly, which includes realizing that there is an emergency quickly, can safe lives.

Someone working on a laptop is going to take more time to get up and move, and the laptop may be a trip hazard to others if dropped. Someone listening to music using earphones may not be able to listen to announcements.

I think that peoples overweight is more in the way then a laptop or cell phone :D Should be ban them too?
 
Last edited:
Screw having cellphones on, bring back smoking! If your allowed to bring your annoying children and babble on your Phone during a flight, I want to be able to smoke

Hope this is sarcasm... if not, then <something that would get me banned> to you!
 
There is a difference between not wanting people to talk on their phone because it annoys you and it causing problems for the plane. Please keep the two separate. Can someone please point to a SINGLE proven instance where a passengers mobile device interfered with a plane? and none of this stupid fear mongering this article sites that has no proof whatsoever that it had anything to do with the mobile device.
 
As an engineer that specializes in investigating software issues with avionics software (mostly things that go bump in the night traced to SEU cosmic ray events and EMI) I assure you, I always take my electronic devices to OFF or Airplane Mode during take-off and landing.

It frustrates me when I hear of politicians that know nothing of safety and electronics try to act like they actually know something of the field.

Would it be effectively the same thing if you turn off Wi-Fi and cellular data? I would imagine that those signals have potential for interference; but if they're off, I don't see why you can't leave the iPhone and iPad on; just wondering.
 
They need to test these under controlled conditions and either prove or disprove the impact to navigational equipment, once and for all.

A NY Times article last week said as many as 30 percent of all passengers said they had accidentally left a device on during takeoff or landing. If portable devices are actually a hazard, wouldn't that mean planes would be falling out of the sky on a daily basis? Instead we get one anecdotal story from two years ago from a rookie pilot flying a regional jet?
 
The fuselage should be designed to block radio signals, problem solved. lol. How can they make a call if they can't get a signal? Only the cockpit section should allow radio signals.
 
As a frequent flyer, I'd be all for using my cell phone (in airplane mode) while the plane is taking off and landing. Sometimes I want to read on my iPad, etc and if I have to shut it off, I feel that I lose my train of thought with what I am reading. First world problem I know, but I don't see that small personal electronics would interfere with operations of an aircraft. Wireless signals on certain frequencies perhaps yes, but if my devices are in airplane mode, I don't see enough EMI being generated even with a plane full of them on.
 
I have witnessed, first hand, a cell phone interfering with a CDI. En-route, not a big deal. If it was during an ILS approach, it might be a bigger deal.

But then perhaps you have more flight experience than I do, and perhaps you have designed more electronic devices than I have, so I bow to your expertise.

Some scientific research might show some trues about this. It is easy to blame all electonic devices if in fact the plane equipment was faulty. This looks a bit as a witch hunt, lets burn them anaways even if we burn a few too much.

PS: I ussually tend to forget to turn my iPhone and never crashed, just ended-up in Australia while going to Canada :D
 
Until more solid research is done in this area, I'll still power down my iPhone/iPad when flying during take-off/landing.

The problem is is this has been researched to death. There is nothing wrong with mobile devices being on. You think the pilots would be allowed to use iPads in the cockpit? They should AT LEAST have exemptions for devices that have been tested and proven to not cause issues (i.e. iPads)
 
"The regional airliner was climbing past 9,000 feet when its compasses went haywire, leading pilots several miles off course until a flight attendant persuaded a passenger in row 9 to switch off an Apple Inc. iPhone.

“The timing of the cellphone being turned off coincided with the moment where our heading problem was solved,” the unidentified co-pilot told NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System about the 2011 incident. The plane landed safely."

The problem in this case is the plane, not the phone. I would like to know the model just to avoid it ...
 
I don't for a second believe that personal electronics pose any threat to safety. We aren't allowed to bring a 5 oz bottle of water through security, but we're supposed to believe that we're allowed to hold onto and self-regulate electronics that are capable of endangering navigation systems? Not bloody likely.

Fwiw, every flight I take, I see people just put their devices away rather than powering them off. No crashes yet.

You are not allowed to bring on large quantities of liquids or gels because they can easily be flammable or explosive substances, disguised to look like juice or toothpaste. Those items can directly cause the loss of an airframe. Interfering with Navigation receivers or radios is not going to (easily) result in a loss of an aircraft, but could interfere with the "most safe" operation of those aircraft. The planes can operate with no radios or navaids with even a complete electrical failure. But it is not the preferred way to run a "most safe" operation. So a thorough investigation into the side-effects of personal electronics is warranted and prudent.
 
If cell phones and other electronic devices have the capability to really interfere with or bring down a plane, they would've been completely banned from even being brought into airports long ago. Think about how much cellular traffic is concentrated within airport grounds.

As I think back on the hundreds of flights I've taken over the years, I bet less than 2% of those flights had 100% compliance from passengers in terms of shutting off electronic devices for takeoff and landing.
 
on my last trip six months ago, when the plane took off, I saw many adults and kids were still playing games on their phone. :mad:
 
You're going to miss your phone a whole lot more when the plane crashes and you and everyone else on board is dead.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTUTuSqqG4

There are several reasons why you shouldn't have your electrical devices turned on on a plane during takeoff and landing:
1) You're supposed to be listening to the flight attendant or a video go over safety procedures which are often given during taxi and takeoff.
2) Having your cell phone on during a flight will drain your battery really quickly as it searches for towers.
3) Devices of all kinds can sometimes malfunction and give off some really weird EM, which may possibly cause interference even if designed not to.

There are several reasons why it shouldn't matter:
1) People are leaving their phones and stuff on anyway for pretty much every flight, and there's never been a plane crash caused by an electronic device left on. There are people who want to crash planes, so yeah.
2) Stray EM can come from anywhere, including the ground, outer space, or the plane's own electronics, so planes should really be shielded against such things, and pilots should be trained to handle it.
3) Systems on the plane can have issues even without stray EM, so planes should be designed for redundancy, and pilots should be trained to handle it.

If it's a problem, and it's clearly not since nobody's ever been hurt by an electronic device on a plane, planes should be designed better and pilots should be trained better. Short of banning these devices from every flight (every flight includes private flights—good luck with enforcement), people will always leave their devices on either by mistake or on purpose so you're going to have to deal with it.
 
The image used in the article is 100% relevant.

/sarcasm

Anyways, as a pilot my self operating under part 91 (FAR), personal electronics have never interfered with my flights.

If Flight Control isn't used to guide the plane, why do the pilots have iPads?

As for personal electronics affecting the plane, there's no chance. Aeroplanes are expensive devices, and at the freaking bare minimum you'd expect their internal electronics to be shielded.

Not only that, but the electronic gadgets themselves can't just blast out capacitance; there are safety standards so that they can be used by people with pacemakers and other electronic implants, etc. The stray field produced by these devices is minimal, and any more powerful signals are on well-defined frequencies (and, again, your aeroplane should really be shielded anyway).
 
really?

Are we really expected to believe that the few milliwatts of power dished out by an iPhone (or any cell phone) is going to affect an airplane's systems compared to the kilowatts of power being dished out by the cell tower over there near the end of the runway? Really?

Any aircraft that experiences interference from a cell phone, laptop, tablet or other similar device, has a major shielding problem that needs to be fixed right away.
 
You can drive a car, a train a ship with your iPhone turned on, but when in a airplane, the airplane suddenly tend to fall out of the sky????

This is complete BS. They have the same stupid restrictions in hospitals (unless you are a doctor than you can). As proven 30% of all travels leave there devices on, isn't this proof enough that the rule is nonsens? It is based on blind fear instead of on facts!

This is not a fair comparison. When you drive a car, your eyes are your primary "instrument", you're travelling much slower than a plane, your margin of error is much higher, you can always slow down or stop if something is wrong, and making a single mistake doesn't mean a high risk that you and all your passengers will be seriously hurt or killed.

When you're in a plane you rely on instruments to tell you where you are, what direction you're pointing, and how to line up for your landing. On a good day your eyes can tell you much of the same information, but on a bad day or at night you rely very much on the instruments. As any small child learns in school, instruments such as compasses can be affected by other (electro)magnetic fields nearby. Who knows what other instruments on board could be affected by RF emissions as well.

I think the problem is not that most iPhones or electronic devices are "unsafe". My iPhone has a built-in compass after all, and it wouldn't work if the phone itself was emitting that much noise.

I suspect that 99.999% of consumer devices wouldn't pose a problem. The problem is that if you make a ruling that allows all electronics, how do you know that one day, somewhere, someone isn't going to bring aboard that 0.001% device that is leaking RF or EM, either because it was badly made or defective? And maybe that happens to be the flight on a plane that's older and has damaged or insufficient shielding, and it's a night-time, stormy, zero-visibility landing...

Slim chance, yes, but how slim is enough? The FAA aren't exactly known for taking risks.
 
It's quite simple. Airplanes that are negatively impacted in any meaningful way by having devices that comply with FCC Part 15 operate inside them are, in my view, not airworthy.

Devices that do not comply with FCC Part 15 are not legal to operate in any context within the United States (or on US flagged vessels in international waters/airspace), but such devices are not at issue here (no device manufactured by a mainline manufacturer, such as Apple, is not going to be Part 15 compliant).

Note, for those terminally confused, we are not talking about iPhones *NOT* being used in airplane mode. Cellular modems are not licensed for aeronautical use because when they're in the air, they cause interference to the cellular network (because they "see" too many cells). Using them in an airplane is a violation of FCC rules first and foremost, never mind the FAA.
 
The problem is is this has been researched to death. There is nothing wrong with mobile devices being on. You think the pilots would be allowed to use iPads in the cockpit? They should AT LEAST have exemptions for devices that have been tested and proven to not cause issues (i.e. iPads)

The problem is that you can buy a dozen iPads, test them, and find they cause no interference. Then a month later someone drops their iPad, the antenna shorts to processor clock, and it starts spewing EMI. Testing specific devices doesn't mean every example of those devices will be OK after undergoing consumer abuse.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.