Quote:
At a minimum such a story needs to go like this
"We were flying the plane. Suddenly the autopilot started malfunctioning. We found some passenger had his phone switched on. We asked him to switch it off. The autopilot was restored. Since we were flying in an empty sky at 30K feet and there was no real danger from a malfunctioning autopilot, to double check we asked the passenger to switch on the phone again. The autopilot malfunctioned again and when we the passenger switched it off, it was restored."
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Surprisingly enough, pilots in general aren't considered to be complete idiots. In fact, *gasp*, many actually do have actual degrees in various sciences and are in general fairly well educated folks. I know it's hard to fathom from that high perch up there, Kovid, but amazingly, this is precisely what the pilot of this flight actually did! Wow! Imagine that! A pilot, someone who is by the nature of their trade a fairly analytical individual, actually didn't leap to a totally asinine conclusion, formed a theory, and performed a test of the theory before arriving at the conclusion. Gee, the wonder of it all...
Six years ago, Boeing received word that a laptop computer was suspected of shutting off the autopilot system on one of its jets during a commercial flight from London to Paris. The pilot conducted tests by turning the computer on and off, which the airline said again triggered the autopilot error. The airline "felt 100% confident that it was a particular laptop" causing the problem, says Bruce Donham, a senior electromagnetics engineer at Boeing.
Boeing sent engineers to Europe, purchased the laptop from the passenger, and tried unsuccessfully to re-create the problem from the same seat and during the exact time of the flight. Later, Boeing arranged to fly the empty plane on the London to Paris route, moving the laptop throughout the aircraft. No interference was discovered. The aircraft maker then brought the laptop back to Seattle and tested it in a Boeing lab. Donham says the tests showed no correspondence between electronic emissions from the laptop and the autopilot computer.