Quote:
Originally Posted by cmdahler
Ah, but you are not looking at the issue the way a safety-oriented regulatory agency approaches the problem. There have been incidents reported by reliable people (flight crew) that indicate some electrical problems on the airplane seemed to be attributable to a personal electronic device back in the cabin. The very fact that these incidents cannot be reproduced under testing conditions is cause for extreme concern: random events with un-reproducible results are the worst sort of headache. The safety-minded regulatory agency, i.e. FAA, decides to err on the side of caution and prohibit the devices' use during a critical phase of flight.
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I'm not trying to look at it from the point of view of a bureaucrat.
I am looking at it from the question as to whether my cell phone, much less my ereader, needs to be turned off to protect us from crashing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cmdahler
Certain types of approaches to landing are required to be conducted with the autopilot all the way to touchdown - the pilot cannot manually fly the airplane because the visibility is so poor that he cannot see out the windshield. Now, do you think that's a good time to test out something you saw on Mythbusters? Or do you think that, perhaps, since there has been the occasional random event, at least one in particular which involved an electronic device causing the autopilot to suddenly disconnect, this might be a better moment to err on the side of caution and turn the cell phone off?
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Given that there is no rational reason that the cell phone will affect anything, I have no problem with it being there.
I don't get paranoid about such things...