An article by two psych professors in the WSJ today suggests what most of us who fly frequently already know about our electronic gadgets supposedly threatening plane flights – they don’t.
WAS ALEC BALDWIN RIGHT? When the actor tussled with American Airlines personnel last December over his desire to continue playing a game on his phone during takeoff, he was evicted from the flight. Defying airline safety rules is not a good idea, but was Baldwin perhaps correct not to take the danger seriously?
On Aug. 31, the Federal Aviation Administration requested public comment on its longstanding policy of prohibiting the use of personal electronics during takeoffs and landings. The restrictions date back to 1991 and were motivated in part by anecdotal reports from pilots and flight crews that electronic devices affected an airliner’s navigation equipment or disrupted communication between the cockpit and the ground. Over the years, however, Boeing has been unable to duplicate these problems, and the FAA can only say that the devices’ radio signals “may” interfere with flight operations.
To gather some empirical evidence on this question, we recently conducted an online survey of 492 American adults who have flown in the past year. In this sample, 40% said they did not turn their phones off completely during takeoff and landing on their most recent flight; more than 7% left their phones on, with the Wi-Fi and cellular communications functions active. And 2% pulled a full Baldwin, actively using their phones when they weren’t supposed to.
Consider what these numbers imply. The odds that all 78 of the passengers who travel on an average-size U.S. domestic flight have properly turned off their phones are infinitesimal: less than one in 100 quadrillion, by our rough calculation. If personal electronics are really as dangerous as the FAA rules suggest, navigation and communication would be disrupted every day on domestic flights. But we don’t see that.
Okay, so what do we do if the mega-nannies at the FAA don’t finally do what they should have years ago and cancel this regulation? Civil disobedience? Imagine if every passenger on a plane refused to turn their iPhone off. The stewardesses… excuse me, cabin attendants… would go batty. Good movie scene for Jack Nicholson, no? Hey, maybe I’ll write it.
But this absurd rule does have a weird upside. It’s the only time these days that I ever read a newspaper in dead tree form. I buy one (almost always a WSJ, the only domestic paper even faintly worth the price) before I get on the plane to have something to read for those twenty minutes before I can use my iPad. If they void this rule, I’ll never read a printed newspaper again. Ah, well, maybe that’s not so bad. One less trip to the airplane lavatory necessary to wash the ink off my hands.
I am a retired airline pilot who twice had interference to navigation instruments by consumer electronics. The first was long enough ago that it can be ignored. The second, in 2005, was to a state of the art Boeing. That was caused by a passenger who, like Baldwin, thought he new better, and left a computer on in the overhead bin.
One point which constantly gets overlooked is that the quality control of consumer electronics coming out of China is poor, at best. Even if a test device was OK, the one you buy on eBay may be a good all band jammer. As the quality of both the consumer goods and aircraft systems improves, it will eventually be safe to use them in flight. At that time, the engineers will make the decision, not phych profs!
The FCC is supposed to certify devices for radiation. The problem is that the FAA and the FCC aren’t talking to each other. Maybe we need an FBB to act as a go-between.
Horsepucky….If this was an actual problem, planes would be dropping out of the sky in droves or there would be an all out ban on consumer electronics on planes led by pilots refusing to fly because of the dangers.
I no more believe your anecdote than I believe in Santa Claus.
As a recent Electrical Engineering graduate, I can safely say that the fault of interference lies with the manufacturer of the plane and not the laptop. It is, in fact, quite easy to isolate the expensive and sophisticated navigation and radio equipment on-board the airplane from simple electronic noise and out-of-band RF produced by consumer electronics. Laptops are built under the assumption that they will be used in close proximity to other low-sensitivity consumer devices, such as cell phones, TVs, FM radios, light bulbs, etc. However, airplanes are designed with the assumption that people will be carried on them with electronic devices in their possession…so naturally, the engineers should make some attempt at eliminating the possibility of interference from most consumer electronics that would be likely carried on-board. But apparently, they don’t.
And in fact, I’d venture a guess that the flight instrumentation, control circuitry, and communication equipment produce far more noise than any iphone, laptop, MP3 player, or CB radio could produce.
And if we’re talking about the 850MHz “tut-tut-tut-tut-tut-taaahaaaaaaaaa” signaling rate interference you get when you put your phone too close to your stereo system, that can easily be remedied by proper shielding.
Really, I think the whole reason why aircraft manufacturers don’t attempt to solve the problem of consumer electronic interference is because the FAA regulation exists.
If the ground noise from my laptop feeding into a pro-audio rig can be solved with a cheap ground lift, and the interference between my cell phone and my stereo system can be eliminated by purchasing marginally-more-expensive shielded audio cable of the minimum necessary length (rather than an extra 6 miles), then aircraft manufacturers can very easily and cheaply eliminate the possibility of consumer electronic interference.
Also, anecdotal evidence is not sufficient, IMO. It could very well be that you just happened to get nailed by a burst of solar radiation at the same time that a laptop was being discovered in the overhead compartment.
All it takes to isolate aircraft radio, navigation, and instrumentation from consumer electronic noise is to encase them in sheet metal boxes. That’s it. That’s how consumer electronic manufacturers isolate their sensitive radio components from interference. If you crack open your cell phone and find the radio baseband, you’ll notice that, other than the exposed antenna, the rest of the radio circuitry is enclosed in a thin aluminum box. This is called a Faraday cage, and it works wonderfully.
As for RF transmissions received by the antennae of the various aircraft devices, those are connected to filters that pull out any signals that fall outside of a very narrow band. On your radio, for instance, that band is determined by the frequency setting.
Of course, the best solution is for the FCC and FAA to collude to move aircraft radio transmission bands so that they neither border on cell phone bands nor line up on any cell phone band harmonics. But that would also be too easy. Far better to keep wasting our time turning devices on and off, wasting the time of flight attendants who must ask and remind people, etc, etc.
What Tregonsee said. The FAA goes overboard on the issue. CYA mostly. It would be possible to check each Electronic device for leakage before allowing it on an aircraft. That would cost money though. Money the airlines will not spend unless forced to.
Charlie don’t surf.
And Americans Don’t Serf.
Not directed at your post btw. Just felt like saying it. It can’t be said often, or loud, enough.
I’m afraid I have to agree with Tregonsee on this one. While it’d certainly be nice to not be parted from our precious gadgets for 30minutes of a flight, it is unsafe. Advances and increased safety measures have helped harden airplanes from the interfering signals, and improved cellphones have reduced their broad-band contamination. However they have yet to reach the degree to which planes are full-proof (enough) against transmitting devices.
Does everyone turn off their phone? No. The instruments are good enough that the interference from a few rogue devices is manageable. But if nobody turned off their phone, the chance and level of interference would be much higher, and right now the instruments are not ready for that.
As he said, leave it to the engineers who actually understand the problem. Not psych profs that say “Will some people don’t turn off their phones, and there is yet to be a crash – therefore everyone should use their phones.” It’s like saying that despite a lack of full vaccine compliance with the Mumps, there has yet to be an epidemic. Therefore no one should get an MMR vaccine.
Plus, can you imagine how annoying plane rides will become once people can talk on their cell phones? No thank you.
The same can be said of having any cell phones on while operating a modern fuel-injected motor vehicle. There is a chance, however remotely infinitesimal, that the RF interference from your cell phone will cause a catastrophic failure of your engine’s ECU, thus causing a shutdown and/or catastrophic failure resulting in accident…but the probability is so small that it does not justify shutting off your cell phone each and every time you climb in the car.
Two things:
In the pilot of the West Wing, the first time you meet Richard Schiff (“Toby Ziegler,” the hyper-serious speechwriter who frowns throughout the run of the series) he’s on an airplane which is sitting on a runway, and the stewardess comes to tell him he has to turn off his cell phone. He in response tells her the type of aircraft they’re on, and the avionics that it uses, in considerable detail, and then asks if she’s telling him that he can bring it down with a cheap phone he bought at Radio Shack. She repeats that he has to turn it off due to FAA regs., he grimaces and turns it off, and that’s that.
Second, I have wondered over the years why they don’t have functions on the laptop or whatever which shut down your internet connection. I would imagine that by itself a laptop, just being turned on, wouldn’t interfere with the avionics in the plane, fifty or a hundred feet away in the cockpit. My Kindle (it’s an old one) has an on/off function for its connection to Amazon’s store. It’s there to preserve battery life. If I was on a plane, I gather they’d make me turn the whole device off, but how powerful can this thing be? It seems excessive.
Then again, erring on the side of caution here is probably good. When/if I ever do fly again, I’ll probably just bring a book. It’s what I usually do anyway…
If people could play w/electronic devises on takeoff, who would listen to the safety belt/exiting instructions?
My guess is that there would be no decline in people listening to the safety instructions: the number of listeners would remain at zero.
Seriously, does anyone ever really listen to those instructions? I don’t think I have since my first or second flight many years ago. Of course there are probably people taking their very first flights every single day so maybe the instructions still serve a purpose….
I watch the stewardess (yes, that’s politically incorrect — deal with it) because it’s polite. Why purposefully antagonize or belittle someone because they are doing their job? She probably doesn’t enjoy it anyway, but there’s no need to make it worse by being deliberately dismissive.
I have a relative that was a Stewardess/Flight Attendant for more years than I have been alive, and when I discussed this with her, that was her number one reason why she would prefer that the cell phone/gadget plan remain in place:
That passengers pay attention to the safety briefing.
That should be *ban*, not *plan*.
Need a quick edit button.
Way back, years ago, I used to build avionics. Things such as DECCA, LORAN, and so forth.The amount of shielding in them is almost not to be believed. For instance the antenna are shielded against ‘backscatter’ (such as you would get from a transmitter inside the aircraft). Not to forget the bandwidth filters that block off frequency signals from reaching the equipment. In short this seems “much ado about nothing).
I could see the old bag phones of the 80s and 90s transmitting with enough power to disrupt planes that, at the time, did not have sufficient shielding to deal with that kind of interference from the passenger section of the plane. However, today, with weaker cell phones and more sophisticated radio and avionics, there’s just no excuse.
My mother was just in the ICU before she passed away. I surfed the net on my cell-puter while I sat there. Nobody said ANYTHING
cosmic rays are more likely to down an airplane than weakling cell phones
Consider for a moment what the “worse-case” electronic noise situation would be on a civilian air liner. Now, think about all the electronic devices that are in use on military intelligence gathering aircraft. The latest generations of these aircraft use *civilian-derived* airframes and flight avionics. There is little to no additional shielding added to these aircraft. Shielding adds weight, additional weight always is bad on aircraft performance; but on military aircraft, additional weight = EXTREMELY BAD/FATAL.
So if our military aircraft can operate safely with electronic, computer, radio and radar systems far more powerful than anything you will ever find on a civilian aircraft, why are we not allowed to use our puny consumer electronic devices on flights?
For vangrungy (#7): Yes, that’s true. A British study found no correlation between cell phone usage & medical devices in hospitals. A couple of doctors I know, & several nurses, all say that the professional staff usualy ignore the warnings because they have no substance.
As for aircraft — my cell phone & many others have an “aircraft mode”. Why is it on there if I have to turn my phone off?
See myth busters Season 4 episode 10
Do Our Gadgets Really Threaten Plane Flights?
Yes, without them we couldn’t catch the pilot/steward/stewardess meltdowns and we’d believe in the unquestionable professionalism of the flight crew.
But, the policy started decades ago when the potential impact was unknown. Now, after the intervening decades of no planes known to have been brought down by the non-use of electronics, it’s unreasonable to expect that a bureaucrat will say “electronics may now be used”. The risk of a negative consequence is simply too big… not for the plane and passengers but for the bureaucrat’s career.
From what I’ve seen, the prohibitions on consumer electronics on airliners date back to the early 1960s. Back then, they discovered that FM radios (88-107.9 MHz) could interfere with VHF navigation signals (108-117.9 MHz) used on VORs and localizers. If a superheterodyne radio didn’t have good filtering, stray emissions could radiate from the receiver’s local oscillator. Localizers provide the horizontal guidance portion of the instrument landing system. They’re simple analog devices.
Back in the 1970s when the use of small electronics devices shot up (calculators and the like), there were reports of interference if the devices weren’t properly shielded. Some of the devices generated square waves that contained multiple harmonics that could reach into the aviation frequency bands. Those problems were solved long ago.
Even if the emissions from consumer electronics are in the milliwatts, they can be thousands of times stronger than the strength of the radio signals that reach the plane’s antennas. Lacking testing data that proves it’s safe, the FAA prohibits using those devices during takeoff and landing. The aircraft manufacturers aren’t interested in spending millions to do the testing and the airlines are even less interested so the prohibition remains.
I’ve been an airframe and powerplant mechanic and avionics technician for almost 30 years in military aviation, commercial airlines as well as MrO’s and I can tell you that there’s 0 chance of interference from personal electronics. first all avionics electronics on a modern aircraft are shielded. second I’ve experimented trying to cause interference with various devices including 3 watt bag phones both inside and outside of the aircraft even touching the device directly to the aircrafts antennas with no resulting effect. These regulations came about because some pilot missed an approach and needed a reason why it was not his fault and snowballed from there. as to the anecdotes please tell me how you can tell there’s a laptop on in row 22 from the left seat of the flight deck.