"... and please switch off all electronic devices."

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by jbjb

That, I'm afraid, is simply wrong.

Digital cellphones most certainly cause interference. Anyone who has been near a speaker and heard the dit-dit-dit when they poll for the base station cannot doubt this.

/JB

no it's not. and for the other person disputing it... I've been installing telecomm equipment for over 30 years. I won't do the research for you, but it's out there!

[Connallmac]

The ban on electronics during take off and landing gives me an excuse to indulge in a glossy magazine!

[HorridRedDog]

One group says "It's their regulations, lets be polite and follow the rules".

One group says "It's inconvenient for me, and my device won’t cause any problems".

One group says "It's all stupid now, because today’s XXXXXX (favorite electronic toy) will not affect the plane".

I'm kinda in the last group. But I'll behave like those in the first group.

Why? Because IF THEY THINK that what you're doing may interfere with the operation and safety of the plane, you might have a federal marshal taking you to a judge to explain why you thought that it was a stupid rule.

I'll just try to keep a straight face as they carry you off the plane.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Now if the second group and the third group want to get together and straighten out the FAA, why I think that that would be GREAT!

Please start now, there's no time to be lost! Start your own website. Gather more opinions!

I would love for you to secede.

Because when I flew the last two times, I hit the switch on the PRS-600. (Of course it didn't turn it off. But everyone was happy.)

[DawnFalcon]

I will certainly put my ereader away during takeoff/landing, but actually switching it off? Completely unnecessary, it can happily sit in my bag on it's page until the plane's achieved cruising altitude.

jbjb - Certainly. This is why devices have radiation emission certifications. Of course we can know, by looking at them, the maximum emission levels.

Hellmark - Oh good joke about military devices. Ha.

[BuddyBoy]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

no it's not. and for the other person disputing it... I've been installing telecomm equipment for over 30 years. I won't do the research for you, but it's out there!

So are you saying digital phones do not cause interference? I used to have a GSM phone that when left on my bedside table would occasionally cause my CPAP machine to start spontaneously when the phone received a text message. I always put to down to some form of EMF interference, but then I'm just a code jockey not a hardware wizard.

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

no it's not. and for the other person disputing it... I've been installing telecomm equipment for over 30 years. I won't do the research for you, but it's out there!

Are you seriously asserting that digital cellphones don't radiate?

(I've been *designing* electronic equipment for over 25 years, so I'm quite capable of doing the research!)

/JB

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

jbjb - Certainly. This is why devices have radiation emission certifications. Of course we can know, by looking at them, the maximum emission levels.

Clearly, people with expertise can know, but my point is that Joe Public hasn't a clue, and is in no position to judge the safety or otherwise of not turning off his kit.

What we have at the moment is a rule set by people who have expertise and have studied the problem, which is being judged to be wrong by people who are utterly unqualified in the field.

/JB

[Stitchawl]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

As far as the military goes, their equipment is designed under strict requirements

Is this the US military to whom you refer? (cough, cough...)


Stitchawl

[Stitchawl]

Originally Posted by HorridRedDog

One group says "It's their regulations, lets be polite and follow the rules".
One group says "It's inconvenient for me, and my device won’t cause any problems".
One group says "It's all stupid now, because today’s XXXXXX (favorite electronic toy) will not affect the plane".

I'm kinda in the last group. But I'll behave like those in the first group.

Gotta love it... and do it with a smile.
I even turn off my hearing aids. Of course then I can't follow their instructions when they talk to me but I can tell if there is a problem when I see the flight attendant performing The Last Rites at the front of the plane or if I see the O2 masks drop down, and I feel pretty darn cocky about the fact that MY hearing aids didn't contribute to the problem!

Stitchawl

[Kevin2960]

Look is it really going to hurt anyone to do as asked ?

Reasons why dont matter, e.g. you ask a smoker not to smoke in your home, reason doesn't matter it's your home your right, Same with Airlines it's thier right !

Oh and you guys with pacemakers .... Switch them off please (hehehe)

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by Kevin2960

Look is it really going to hurt anyone to do as asked ?

Reasons why dont matter, e.g. you ask a smoker not to smoke in your home, reason doesn't matter it's your home your right, Same with Airlines it's thier right !

I agree to 120% to that. K for u Kevin. Really, it is a question of courtesy, politeness, education, name it how you like it, but that is the point for me.

I was sitting next to a lady on a short flight from Paris to Cologne who insisted she had to have her Kindle on the whole time. She was sooo rude to the stewardess, she made a real feast out of it, she ruined the flight for me, the whole row in front, the other in the back, the two others on the side, both stewardess and I'd say probably the whole plane.

Get a grip people. If you want to travel to your own rules, buy your own jet. Leave the rest of us in peace !

[kovidgoyal]

Soon enough cars are going to have as much electronic equipment as planes. Auto drivers, traction control, electric motors and computers to control all this, along with radios and antennas so the cars can call home automatically. I wonder how they're going to deal with cell phones in cars.

Also considering that planes fly at high altitudes they are exposed to a lot of cosmic radiation, I remember reading somewhere that a single flight exposes its passengers to the equivalent of n X-ray scans.

Since I'm pretty sure that they will be dealt with, it's really a matter of hardening plane systems, which presumably costs money, which is why it isn't done.

I don't know enough (and googling seems to indicate no else does either) to comment on whether today's airliners are really vulnerable to electronic devices or not. But it seems pretty clear that there is no fundamental reason they cannot be designed to not be.

[cmdahler]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Soon enough cars are going to have as much electronic equipment as planes. Auto drivers, traction control, electric motors and computers to control all this, along with radios and antennas so the cars can call home automatically. I wonder how they're going to deal with cell phones in cars.

But of course, if your cell phone causes your car's engine to stall, that's not such a big deal as a problem with an airplane a few hundred feet off the ground flying at 200 mph...

Also considering that planes fly at high altitudes they are exposed to a lot of cosmic radiation, I remember reading somewhere that a single flight exposes its passengers to the equivalent of n X-ray scans.

Cosmic radiation can be a problem depending on where you are. The pilot and flight attendant unions have all conducted their own studies of this issue and have concluded that, on average, a crewmember flying a typical full schedule that consists entirely of transatlantic or transpacific flying receives the equivalent of approximately one chest X-ray a month. Flying domestically, especially short flights that don't get very high, not nearly so much. Cosmic radiation levels dramatically increase above about 30,000 feet, and the farther north you fly, the worse the radiation gets.

I don't know enough (and googling seems to indicate no else does either) to comment on whether today's airliners are really vulnerable to electronic devices or not. But it seems pretty clear that there is no fundamental reason they cannot be designed to not be.

No one knows the answer: that's basically the problem in a nutshell. There have been a few incidents over the past few decades where some fairly minor problem on the airplane seemed to be caused by a passenger's electronic device. In one particular incident, a passenger's laptop being switched on seemed to cause the airplane's autopilot to disengage. The crew had the guy turn the laptop on and off two or three times, and each time it was turned on, the autopilot disconnected. The crew reported this, of course, and Boeing even went so far as to buy this guy's laptop from him, took the same airplane on the same route with the same laptop in the same seat, and they were unable to duplicate the problem.

Reports like that from presumably reliable witnesses (the flight crew) that cannot be repeated under test conditions drive the regulatory agencies nuts. And of course, it's one thing to cause an autopilot to disengage at cruise altitude: just push the button and reconnect it, or of course the pilot can just manually fly the airplane. But when visibility is down to just a few hundred meters at the airport and the autopilot is required to fly the approach and even make the landing because the pilots cannot see out the window, it would not be a very good time to have the thing randomly disconnect because someone's toy radiated in just the wrong way at just the wrong time.

Without being able to isolate a specific cause for these rare, random events, the regulatory agencies always err on the side of caution. Everyone ought to actually be thankful that the FAA in the U.S. didn't just blanket-prohibit everything electronic from being used on the airplane at all times; they at least had the common sense to limit electronic devices to non-critical phases of flight. It wouldn't have surprised me in the least to see everything prohibited at all times.

All of you folks who are complaining about this are quite right: your reader wouldn't cause any problems...probably. Almost certainly. But without being able to prove to the regulatory agencies that it could not possibly cause a problem during a critical moment, well, can you imagine a government bureaucrat going out on a limb and letting you use it without a mountain of evidence to cover his own backside? As long as there's a random incident or two out there once every ten years or so that no one can reproduce under test conditions, I guarantee that electronic thingy won't be allowed.

[DJHARKAVY]

Originally Posted by ChrisC333

Come on - get real. Flight staff can't rely on every passenger being either fully informed about their toys, or being responsible either. Some folks don't know or care what the full story is, or may even be genuinely mistaken. There is a large range of electronic devices that can be taken on a plane, and neither the staff nor the owners can be 100% relied on to know exactly which may cause a problem under which settings or circumstances. Most won't cause trouble, but it may only take one person to get it wrong.

According to Mythbusters, handheld electronics, including cell phones, do not affect the instrumentation in the least.

Think about it... Do you really think that the airplane navigation systems will be affected by the small power output of even a hundred cell phones?

[cmdahler]

Originally Posted by DJHARKAVY

According to Mythbusters, handheld electronics, including cell phones, do not affect the instrumentation in the least.

Think about it... Do you really think that the airplane navigation systems will be affected by the small power output of even a hundred cell phones?

Right, because that show is the fount of all wisdom and knowledge. In your words, think about it. There's never been a reliably reproducible problem with an electronic device. Thus, the Mythbusters episode was just a complete waste of those guys' time. Anyone could have told them that just with a little research into the issue. The problem is the random, un-reproducible problems that have occurred. Now, how much faith do you have in Mythbusters on your flight on a Cat-III autoland approach at 100 feet off the ground moving at 150+ mph?