Quote:
Originally Posted by cmdahler
If that was not your intent, then you have my apologies.
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No that was not my intent. I don't think it's the responsibility of flight crews to determine the risk electronics pose. I do think it is the responsibility of the FAA/plane manufacturers. And I do think that they have not lived up to this responsibility.
In fact, if anecdotal evidence indicates that electronics do cause problems, I think that there needs to far more work on this. For instance, people often forget to turn of their phones on flights. If it were to be established that cell phones really do cause problems, then I would expect airlines to be far more strict about enforcing the no cell phones rule.
My complaint is that, it is not established. And given the following points, I am inclined to believe that it is at best an isolated risk that will manifest itself only in certain situations, with individual planes, rather like bird hits:
1) People routinely forget to turn off phones on flight.
2) Airlines are moving towards allowing phones/wireless broadband on flights
3) Aeroplanes are subjected to EM radiation of higher intensity than from cell phones, form other sources, like cosmic rays.
I will admit that with regard to (3) there could be mitigating circumstances, that make radiation from the environment more benign than radiation from electronics.
So the important question is to determine what the systemic risk is from electronics in planes and then to make an informed decision based on that determination, on whether to allow them or not.