01-07-2013, 01:03 AM | #46 | |
Nodding at stupid things
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Bingo
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01-07-2013, 02:10 AM | #47 | |
Nameless Being
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01-08-2013, 03:36 PM | #48 |
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The reason for the 10,000 foot requirement is there is a LOT more air traffic below 10,000 feet. The airlines run what is called a sterile cockpit below 10,000. NO talking, except for thing directly related to the flight. NOTHING. There were several incidents that occured when due to chatting, radio call were missed.
As for interference, I can hear my phone ring, before it rings, in several cars. Multiply that by up to 550 people (A380) and you can have an issue. As for the rules, the FAA doesn't ban their use. The FAA requires the that the operator (airline) determine what is safe and what is not safe. So with airlines running near 0 profit (or at a loss) who do you think is going to pay for the testing required? The reason the pilots (only on some airlines) can use iPads instead of paper charts is that it is easy to test two specified devices in a specific places on the aircraft. |
01-08-2013, 09:11 PM | #49 |
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Let me talk about the difficulties of making certain that nothing is being interfered with on the plane by people's electronics.
A device may be designed and tested to operate on a certain frequency that causes no problems. Then because of failure in the device, other frequencies including harmonics are produced that weren't expected. The best way to prevent something in the passenger cabin from interfering with the cockpit is to electrically shield them from each other, but then there might be cables in the body of the plane that could be affected by signals from the passengers or for that matter from the cargo area. Radio interference isn't what it used to be but it hasn't gone away. Some of you may have experienced some of it when you heard another caller on your house phone or cell phone. Likewise, you might have heard a CBer or a Radio Telephone on your TV or radio. Sometimes this is called "cross talk." These same signals might interfere with devices that aren't powering audio circuits and then you might not know about it immediately. |
01-08-2013, 09:33 PM | #50 |
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I think the most influential article on the limit-device-use side is this one from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Spectrum magazine:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/a...t-any-airspeed This certainly is a controversial article. But its existence shows that reasonable people can have a safety concern here. Last edited by SteveEisenberg; 01-08-2013 at 09:37 PM. |
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01-08-2013, 09:37 PM | #51 |
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01-08-2013, 09:48 PM | #52 |
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A few years ago, I was a juror on a burglary case where the 3 men accused were driving through suburban neighborhoods using a remote device to open garage doors. Amazing how many could be opened!
Naive on my part, perhaps, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me that today's electronics could interfere with 'yesterday's' airplanes. |
01-08-2013, 09:55 PM | #53 | |
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Perhaps something actively transmitting like a cell phone could interfere with a radio, but it would have to be pretty badly designed to put out that much power on a frequency well away from where it's supposed to be transmitting. The only possibility I can really see is someone actively broadcasting at high power to try to make it crash, but then they're hardly going to turn it off just because the cabin crew tell them to. |
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01-09-2013, 05:30 AM | #54 | |
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Similarly, the EMI immunity of avionics can be less than would be hoped for. While it does seem unlikely that a problem could be caused, the range of unknowns involved in an unknown collection of unknown devices radiating unknown powers with unknown spectra makes it very hard to be sure. It doesn't take much study to see that this is an area in which expert opinion varies - the answer isn't clear and requires more study. It seems perfectly sensible to me that until sufficient work has been done by experts to be confident that it's safe then playing safe is the right thing to do. This is an area where the "weight of public opinion" needs to be ignored (other than in encouraging those with the expertise to do the research). No matter how much Joe Public may feel that he understands the science, he doesn't - this is an area for the experts to decide, not public opinion. A couple of points which are frequently brought up to argue in favour of allowing devices:
In answer to (1) - there's a big difference between a known number of known devices being used in a known way at a known time and the free-for-all of unknowns above. In answer to (2) - there's a big gap between the confidence that a crash would be caused required to make the devices an option for terrorists and the confidence that a problem won't be caused required to provide adequate safety for passengers. If (hypothetically) use of a phone caused a crash every 100,000 flights it would be useless as a terrorist tool but still present too much of a risk to be allowed. Having said all that, it seems likely to me that at some point in the near future enough work will have been done to show that it is (in some form) sufficiently safe and more freedom will be allowed. /JB |
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01-09-2013, 06:20 AM | #55 |
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Again, if these devices truly posed a safety risk, the FAA would ban them. After all, what guarantee does the flight crew have that all devices have been turned off?
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01-09-2013, 06:23 AM | #56 | |
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01-09-2013, 06:45 AM | #57 | |
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We have historical evidence to show that the current arrangement (where all are asked to be turned off and, presumably, most but not all are) yields an acceptable level of risk (i.e. the rate of accidents is still acceptably low). We have no such evidence about what would happen if there was freedom to use whatever gadget you wanted at whatever time. Personally, if we're considering changing the policy from one which we have evidence is safe to one with no such evidence, I'd rather that was done once scientific tests have shown it to be safe. /JB |
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01-09-2013, 06:53 AM | #58 | |
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That's not really the point though. If we're talking about changing the rules then whether there are cases under the *existing* rules isn't the issue - we don't know how many cases there would be if devices *were* allowed as we haven't got a track record of operating under those rules to study. /JB |
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01-09-2013, 10:30 AM | #59 | |
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Uh, yes. But it's nowhere near the amount that an electronic device from the 80s would radiate.
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The simple reality is that, on any flight, there are probably half a dozen people who forgot to turn off their cell phone or other device and it's sitting in their bag or pocket doing its thing despite all the rules. So if your avionics can't handle that, you've got big problems. |
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01-09-2013, 10:31 AM | #60 |
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