Quote:
Originally Posted by Edward M. Grant
Modern electronics is designed not to interfere with anything.
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All non-trivial electronics radiates. There are legal restrictions on how much devices are allowed to radiate (e.g. FCC Class A/B in the US for unintentional radiators), but these limits aren't zero. Furthermore, in the real world devices can be faulty and may well radiate above these limits.
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:
- "Some airlines allow pilots to use iPads, so it must be safe"
- "If it wasn't safe, terrorists wouldn't bother with explosives, they'd just use cellphones"
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