[FJames]

As many of you will be traveling on planes with your e-reader over the holidays, you will undoubtedly discover the annoyance of not being allowed to read for an extended period around take-off and landing. The U.S. FAA has a blanket ban on all electronic devices from gate push-back to seat-belt sign off, and from about 10 minutes before landing until arrival at the gate. Most other countries follow the FAA's lead.

This is a better-safe-than-sorry policy which may have made sense originally, but its time has clearly passed. In the vast number of flights that happen every day around the world, there is not a single documented case ever of passenger electronic devices interfering with navigation, in spite of many investigations into cases where it was raised as a possibility for an unexplained problem. In fact research by the IEEE has shown that there are on average dozens of passenger electronic devices (including many active cell phones) left running throughout most flights. Not to mention of course the on-board entertainment electronics (now including WiFi), which are often left on during landing. It's all detectable by the special instruments the IEEE used, but apparently has never interfered with aircraft navigation. It's especially unlikely in the case of e-readers, which operate at very low power.

I guess the FAA's rationale for continuing the ban is that it's impossible to anticipate the range of consumer electronic devices that might be used and have never been tested, or that some of them might malfunction and emit unexpected interference. But the fact is that these devices are present and usually not fully turned off anyway. Maybe it's time to update an outdated policy.