Flash: The New York Times Opposes Senseless Government Regulation
At least when it comes to reading a book on your Kindle or iPad while on an airliner below 10,000 feet.
According to the F.A.A., 712 million passengers flew within the United States in 2010. Let’s assume that just 1 percent of those passengers — about two people per Boeing 737, a conservative number — left a cellphone, e-reader or laptop turned on during takeoff or landing. That would mean seven million people on 11 million flights endangered the lives of their fellow passengers.
Yet, in 2010, no crashes were attributed to people using technology on a plane. None were in 2009. Or 2008, 2007 and so on. You get the point.
Surely if electronic gadgets could bring down an airplane, you can be sure that the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, which has a consuming fear of 3.5 ounces of hand lotion and gel shoe inserts, wouldn’t allow passengers to board a plane with an iPad or Kindle, for fear that they would be used by terrorists.
Kudos to Times reporter Nick Bilton for getting this one exactly right. What do you think the chances are that we can convince Bilton's editors to employ the same impeccably empirical approach in the analysis of equally feckless economic regulations?
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Mar '11
Re: Flash: The New York Times Opposes Senseless Government Regulation
I worked on military avionics systems for about 20 years (software, not hardware). The idea that someones laptop or cellphone represented a threat to proper functionality on a commercial system never made any sense at all to me. Military aircraft have more gizmos, thingamagigs, and doohickeys than I feel like counting. Doppler radar, side-scan radar, radios, CRTs, head trackers, heads-up displays...the C-5B Galaxy had a microwave oven in the galley, for crying out loud!
If there is a piece of equipment that is that sensitive to "interference" on the plane, why is it still in the air?
Apr '11
Re: Flash: The New York Times Opposes Senseless Government Regulation
I suspect the ban on cell phones stems from the desire that riots not break out on board.
Re: Flash: The New York Times Opposes Senseless Government Regulation
Percival: I worked on military avionics systems for about 20 years (software, not hardware). The idea that someones laptop or cellphone represented a threat to proper functionality on a commercial system never made any sense at all to me. Military aircraft have more gizmos, thingamagigs, and doohickeys than I feel like counting. Doppler radar, side-scan radar, radios, CRTs, head trackers, heads-up displays...the C-5B Galaxy had a microwave oven in the galley, for crying out loud!
If there is a piece of equipment that is that sensitive to "interference" on the plane, why is it still in the air? · Nov 28 at 5:55pm
Percival, I've been a private pilot for 31 years now (gasp) and my experience is identical to yours. I've even tried to cause interference using high-powered ham radios in light aircraft, all to no avail.
Yet I continue to have to twiddle my thumbs for 10-20 minutes at either end of a flight because that book I'm reading is on an iPad and, well, iPads are somehow dangerous, dontcha know.
May '10
Re: Flash: The New York Times Opposes Senseless Government Regulation
I must 'fess up: I am a very bad girl. On any flight less than five hours I leave my phone on. Just turn off the ringer. Thus, my email downloads when/before I land and I don't have to wait for the phone to power up and connect to a network. It all started by accident; I just forgot to turn the phone off. I get a secret thrill from this tiny rebellious action.
Mar '11
Re: Flash: The New York Times Opposes Senseless Government Regulation
It started as a billing issue. A single cell phone that is above ground level can tie up a number of base stations, reducing network capacity. And in the early days, the systems could not keep up - literally, callers were not being charged because the assumptions built into the ground stations couldn't handle someone moving at aircraft speeds.
And so the cell companies raised the issue with the FAA, and said "we cannot guarantee the phones won't cause interference." With that, the Precautionary Principle took over, and the rest is inertia.
Jan '11
Re: Flash: The New York Times Opposes Senseless Government Regulation
iWc is spot-on - but once the airlines can get a cut of the mobile call charges it "will miraculously cause our safety concerns about mobile phones to evaporate"
Oct '11
Re: Flash: The New York Times Opposes Senseless Government Regulation
I'll bow to those of you with avionics experience, but I could swear that this concern made a Mythbusters episode a few years ago, and they found that CDMA/TDMA (Sprint, Verizon) phones did cause some interference (cannot recall with which systems), but that GSM phones (AT&T, T-Mobile, European systems) did not. None of that explains why people have to shut their laptops or WiFi devices down, or power things completely off, rather than switching to Airplane Mode.