Quote:
Originally Posted by nick101
I agree - no question that it's about the safest for of transport in terms of deaths/serious injuries per passenger mile.
But the logic of concern is:
(a) if there's an incident (which is acknowledged to be rare), the consequences (as witness the BA incident) are potentially very bad
(b) (which is, I think the one the authorities are really concerned about) deliberate action (i.e. terrorism) distorts the probability. Planes are very reliable and, as we know, are very unlikely to suffer a catastrophic mid-air failure). The worry is the damage/destruction of a reliable machine by intention, which is not reflect in historic figures.
I'm not defending some of the (to me) irrational decisions that have been mad - just trying to illuminate some of the thinking behind it, much of which exemplifies the adage that logic is a way of being wrong with confidence.
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Quite. Most of the 'security' rules are, as I stated, senseless. Wireless devices s/b turned off during flight because they might 'interfere with navigation'. Except they don't unless deliberately altered to do so-as you mentioned. Of course there are no detectors, that I know of, to indicate whether a device is operating or not-so the authorities apparently believe that a terrorist, when told (as part of a group announcement) to turn off his wireless device, will actually do so.
And then, to cap that stupidity, they allow wireless devices to be turned back on during flight if the plane has a mobile base station-as if the altered device would use that.