

The Real Hazards of E-Devices on Planes - 001sky
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/f-a-a-rules-make-electronic-devices-on-planes-dangerous

======
ricardobeat
I found this 2005 paper from NASA's Langley Research Center [1]. The report
says that the data "confirms this expectation [of interference] with alarming
clarity", though it is completely based off crew reports _attributing_ a
problem to a device in use. It also uses data from 1986-1999, both airplanes
and devices have improved a lot since.

In addition, most of the incidents in the annual report on electronic devices
[2] are of the kind "passenger X refused to turn off his mobile phone /
[random problem here] crew suspects passenger in the bathroom using his laptop
as culprit".

Why can't gov. agencies or airplane manufacturers create an test that mimicks
real-world conditions and put a definitive end to the question?

[1]
[http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2005023...](http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20050232846_2005233838.pdf)

[2] <http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/docs/rpsts/ped.pdf>

~~~
dhimes
_Why can't gov. agencies or airplane manufacturers create an test that mimicks
real-world conditions and put a definitive end to the question?_

Agreed. Just to a broadband jamming experiment to see what leaks in. A mil-
spec style shielding might be expensive (this is the argument a pilot made to
me- as if planes are cheap), but we could at least _test_ , and possibly
approve some designs.

OTOH, turning off devices for a few minutes isn't really a big concern for me.
But I dislike the "it's ok to be ignorant" attitude by the rule-makers.

------
jkat
The FAA is being ridiculous about this.

However...there's literally nothing I find more aggravating than flying -
because of other passengers. Every flight, there's always a handful of people
who refuse to follow the simple rules. Their carry-on is too big. They switch
seats or use the lavatories when they are supposed to be seated and buckled-
in. They don't re-adjust their seats when landing. They grab their carry-on
while the plane is taxiing.

I always feel horrible for the flight attendants. It feels like they are
running a day care. Why are people like that? Are they stupid and don't
understand the rules? Or do they think the rules don't apply to them?

~~~
swombat
> _Why are people like that? Are they stupid and don't understand the rules?
> Or do they think the rules don't apply to them?_

Speaking for myself, I have no respect for authority that does not stem from
experience, knowledge, wisdom, etc. Air hosts/hostesses have none of those
attributes - they are merely parrotting rules handed down to them, without
putting any thought into them.

A case in point is the electronic devices rule - clearly nonsensical and
stupid. I take it as a good sample of the sense in the other rules being
imposed, and therefore revert to my default mode of operation, that applies in
most circumstances, unless overridden by someone who appears to deserve to
have the power to tell me what to do. In other words, I do what I think is
sensible, reasonable.

Therefore, yes, I do check my emails before the plane has finished moving and
even (gosh!) before the passport gates. I do grab my bag at the first
opportunity (though it's usually pointless to do so before the plane has
stopped moving - but then it's reason that's stopping me, not rules). I do fit
as much as I can get away with into my bag (which generally weighs more than
5kg - but is usually compact and easy to stow because I value those
attributes).

In other words, I act like the free, responsible human being that I am, and
no, I don't care one whit for "the rules" except where I have analysed them
and deemed them sensible myself.

Here's some good news for you: "the rules" don't apply to you either - not
unless you want them to.

~~~
techsupporter
And this is why we can't have nice things. "The rules," as you so aptly scare-
quote, are not there solely to govern the actions of a single human being.
They are there so that the system, as a whole, functions. A word exists for
this: society. Unless the rule is unjust, you are not the final arbiter of
whether or not a rule should be followed. What you find sensible and
reasonable may not actually _be_ sensible and reasonable beyond first glance.

Yes, this rule appears to be monumentally stupid. However, another person in
this very thread has raised a good (though possibly misinformed) point
regarding frequency intermod. Sometimes we simply can't test all circumstances
and the FAA has made a (potentially dumb) judgement call in favor of
overwhelming paranoia for safety instead of letting people fling colored birds
at green pigs below 10,000 feet.

Being free does not give you license to discard that which you, in your own
self, deem insensible when you are existing in a space where anyone but
yourself exists. You operate in a world with billions of other humans, each
with competing goals and diverging motivations. The least you can do is play
by the rules that we, as a group, have decided are the compromise.

As a bit of site commentary, I notice your post getting more and more grey as
people remove points because they disagree. In this instance, I added a point
because, though I disagree, I think that your post is a useful addition to the
commentary.

~~~
robrenaud
I'd personally love it if society had more people like swombat, rather than
fewer.

Of course, there is a risk when choosing to ignore rules that you are ignoring
them because they you are an inconvenience to you but are generally good for
society. Government incented/enforced vaccination would be a good example of
such a reasonable though possibly annoying rule. I totally concede that point,
and hence, individuals need to be especially mindful about their own self
serving biases when choosing to disobey rules.

But on the other hand, imagine if rules that effected tens of millions of
people all had scientific studies about their tradeoffs, their risks, and
their efficiency. How much less bullshit would we have to deal with?

I think lots of big innovation is done by rule breakers. It's exactly what pg
talks about in point 4 about wanting founders who are naughty.

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html>

~~~
DanBC
> I'd personally love it if society had more people like swombat, rather than
> fewer.

You might feel differently if you lived next to a rule breaker who had no
concept of noise nuisance.

 _"The Collector Collector"_ (Tibor Fischer) is a fun read; relevant here
because he describes quite nicely the sense of entitlement that some criminals
feel.

~~~
swombat
> _You might feel differently if you lived next to a rule breaker who had no
> concept of noise nuisance._

I'm sure he would. As it happens, I am not typically a noise creator - but you
are, today, downvoting my post and then replying to it within a minute of me
posting it. I've kindly returned the favour.

~~~
DanBC
I did not down the post you replied to. I did downvote the your post that
first replied to. I up voted the post where you said that you're not rude to
airline staff.

EDIT:

> _replying to it within a minute of me posting_

Timestamps disagree with you.

~~~
swombat
s/a minute/a few minutes/

------
wglb
There are two issues going on simultaneously.

I suggest the following experiment. Take your hand-held two-way radio
transmitter to Dayton Ohio during the annual ham convention there. Tune it to
a 2 meter frequency, and just listen for half an hour. You will hear vast
quantities of intermodulation--signals that aren't really there, and signals
that are there that are hopelessly garbled.

This is happening because there are hundreds of similar transmitters all over
the hamfest that are transmitting simultaneously. The intermodulation
distortion comes about because when a radio receiver, half of your two-way
radio, receives multiple signals these signals combine in the receiver and
produce distortion signals that are the sum and difference of two frequencies.
So with many multiples of frequencies that are rather strong, there are a host
of fake signals going to your earphone.

Each device, such as an iPad, iPhone, android device, has multiple radio
transmitters. Some of them are deliberate radio transmitters, such as the wi-
fi or the cellular radio. Others are the side effect of the receivers that are
built in to the devices, such as the GPS. Receivers themselves actually
transmit, albeit at a smaller level. Similarly, if you have a transistor am/fm
radio receiver, it generates (transmits) a signal as well.

Other unintentional transmitters are the clock for any CPU that might be
there.

So on an airplane, if there are tens or hundreds of devices, you get a real
mass of interfering signals.

How does this affect the avionics of the airplane? Well, you won't hear a
heterodyne, as there is no audio output--just some instrument reading. What
happens when the avionics hears intermodulation distortion?

As to the idea that two hundred ipads are just like one, the claim that
_“Electromagnetic energy doesn’t add up like that,” said Kevin Bothmann, the
EMT Labs testing manager_ doesn't square with simple physics. Another article
quoting this lab study suggested that he was confused by the difference
between decibels and power levels. I argue that it adds up worse. Check out
Dayton.

The article says _None of those episodes have produced scientific evidence
that a device can harm a plane’s operation. Reports of such interference have
been purely speculation by pilots about the cause of a problem._ The thing is,
that speculation about problems in the air by experienced aircraft operators
is the only clue that we have just up to the point where people die. As was
the case in the Tenerife air disaster, _three second long whistling sound (or
heterodyne)_ blocked a very key bit of information.

The way we learn if a pilot's suspicion is true is for people to die in
aircraft accidents.

So the second problem is for the cellular phones. Keep in mind that cellular
phones depend upon line-of-sight. If you are walking down Jackson avenue to
meet a friend at Intellegensia for coffee, your line of sight to the cellular
towers is limited. So how far is the line of sight away if you are at 20,000
feet? Quite a ways. Possibly the next state. For every cell tower that your
phone can "see", there is the possibility of a connection. Not a good idea to
tie up that many cellular tower channels.

It will be interesting to see how this battle plays out. If the current FAA
rules are right that passengers should not be transmitting during take off and
landing and the social pressure causes the rules to change, the only way we
will know is when a plane falls out of the sky, since we aren't giving pilots
complaining about heterodynes any credibility.

~~~
Karunamon
>So on an airplane, if there are tens or hundreds of devices, you get a real
mass of interfering signals.

I'd wager large and ridiculous amounts of cash that many people just stash
their devices without actually turning them "off" or into any kind of
"airplane mode".

So where's this danger?

What about devices that don't have an "off"? I've gotten into more than one
argument (and nearly ejected from a plane) over a Kindle, since even when
"off" there's still text on the screen. It took the words of about 4 other
passengers to convince the FA she needs to educate herself about e-ink.

The ire here is because the FAA's rules have no intelligence behind them.

"Electromagnetic interference"

Science doesn't add up. Try again.

"Distraction"

You don't stop people from reading books.

"Danger in case of turbulence or sudden movement"

Again you don't stop people from reading books.

I, and a great deal more air travellers, would have more respect for the rules
if they showed the slightest inkling of having any kind of common sense or
conistency to them. When a five year old can point out something wrong with
your rule, you are doing it wrong.

~~~
wglb
>The ire here is because the FAA's rules have no intelligence behind them.

Well, I suggest that the ire is more that "I think the rule is ridiculous and
I want to use my device anyway."

They do have intelligence behind them in the form of raw physics.

>Science doesn't add up. Try again.

Sorry, but science does in fact add up. Radio signals are important for an
airplane to navigate. iPads and other PEDs can cause interference. How do you
explain that to the typical passenger? Perhaps they take a different tack to
get the different behavior.

~~~
DanBC
> How do you explain that to the typical passenger?

You get some video cameras and start filming. You take some avionic displays.
You take a bunch of cell phones and iPads. You turn the cell phones on, do
some normal activities, and record the distortions to the avionics devices.

You then show that video to passengers.

I believe that pre-GSM analogue phones probably caused considerable
interference.

And, because they are not close to cell towers modern GSM phones will switch
to highest-power mode to get a better signal. Having a couple of hundred of
those phones bunched up together in a plane might cause problems. Listen to
the burbling noise you get with a phone near any radio. (And the electronics
are not all in the pilot's cabin - there's stuff all over aircraft.)

But it's obviously controversial, and causes confrontation between bolshy
passengers and staff who have _no option_ but to enforce the rule; so if
they're going to continue to have the rule they should justify it with science
and research and evidence.

Do the studies. Show the harm. Publish the results.

And if it's not harmful, well, great. Change the regulations and concentrate
on all the other stuff that can cause death and destruction.

------
bmuon
Well, the Mythbusters showed that the reason is that old planes without
shielding on their wires and instruments did get interference from cell phone
calls[1]. But no modern plane should have that issue.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2006_season)#Episo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_\(2006_season\)#Episode_49_.E2.80.93_.22Cell_Phones_on_a_Plane.22)

~~~
jkat
Best. Show. Ever.

Wouldn't make an important decision based on them. They are good, but a lot of
what they do isn't nearly rigorous enough to risk lives.

~~~
bmuon
In this case the interesting part was that they actually showed that a
cellphone can cause interference with some instruments. They dug up some old
instruments, put them in a Faraday cage, called a cellphone and the needles in
the instruments moved like crazy. So we now know the root of the problem.

Then they showed that in a modern plane that shouldn't happen. And that wasn't
scientific at all. But the point is that we know what the issue is and how to
solve it (shielding), that modern planes already implement the solution and
that the only thing left is to explore the issue a little further and publish
it in a way that both the public and the regulatory agencies can digest and
apply.

------
dhruvmittal
I don't think I've ever been more appreciative of any single Senator than I am
now for Claire McCaskill and her comments in this article.

A plane I was on just last week had a flight attendant that made the claim
that he could check some sensor and tell us which mobile devices were on
within the plane at any time. After the flight, I checked in with my family
(Two teenagers, myself, and my older parents) and discovered that every one of
us had taken that as a challenge and left our devices on.

------
oakwhiz
There are two main classes of electronic devices:

1\. Devices that are unintentional radiators 2\. Devices that are intentional
radiators

The concern is that people may not know which class their device falls into,
and also that they may not know how to fully disable their device as well. The
problem with intentional radiators is more obvious - it could potentially jam
other circuits by producing energy at specific frequencies. However, many
people seem to ignore the other class of unintentional radiators. Many
circuits require the use of clock generators and phase-locked loops, which can
actually radiate a fair distance away if not designed correctly. One of the
problems with this is that noise generated by a PLL could intermodulate with
the PLLs in the plane's navigation systems (i.e. GPS or ADF) and cause the
pilot to use an inaccurate position report in determining the location of the
plane.

An example of one such interference case: Someone wanted to launch a high-
altitude balloon with onboard GPS and an amateur radio transmitter. They added
a small keychain camera manufactured by a Chinese company, but when the camera
was powered on, it completely disabled the GPS from locking on to any
satellites.

------
yock
I have always wondered what the FCC must think of the FAA for this policy. I
don't know a lot about the FCC certification process for electronics that
contain radios, but I know that it involves both minimizing the amount of
harmful emissions and operating safely under some harmful emissions. That the
FAA could cite interference from radios as a reason to ban their use seems to
this layman as a textbook example of the left hand not knowing what the right
hand is doing. Typical contradictory policy making that we've come to expect
of large governments.

------
DanielBMarkham
I think the FAA is acting like an idiot, here, but it'd be good to look at
this from their side.

This falls under the "stuff that might make me look bad" category. You can be
the guy who _prevents_ electronic devices on planes for 50 years and it
doesn't matter. But if you're the guy that approves them and then there's a
crash? Better get your Senate suit out of the cleaners, because all of those
politicians writing you letters to "do something" will be the first ones
asking you the tough questions on national TV. They'll be first in line to
take credit if the result is good, but it's all on you if the result is bad.

It's very difficult to set up a politically-derived organization that can deal
with risk effectively. Instead on manageable risk, it's much safer and easier
to push for situations with no risk at all -- take the TSA, for instance.

No bureaucrat gets fired for being too careful. This is an issue that might
very well end up requiring legislation to fix.

ADD: One more note. Every day there are millions of passenger miles flown on
airlines. Surely the law of large numbers says that _we're already performing
an experiment on electronic device radiation and the cockpit_. There's no way
you can get 100% of the devices off. Somebody left their phone in the carry-
on. Somebody's PC refuses to shut down. Somebody forgets to turn his kindle
off. Dozens, if not hundreds of times each day, planes are flying in difficult
weather with all kinds of electronic devices transmitting all kinds of
garbage. Yet we've never seen a flight failure due to electronic interference.

And of course the pilots are up front using all sorts of consumer devices as
well.

We've already done the experiment, at least in smaller numbers. Whether or not
there's a problem when hundreds of devices are on is certainly an open
question, but whether or not a few of them are going to take down a plane is
already settled.

~~~
bradleyland
> One more note. Every day there are millions of passenger miles flown on
> airlines. Surely the law of large numbers says that we're already performing
> an experiment on electronic device radiation and the cockpit.

I couldn't agree with this more. At one point, I was flying very frequently
for work, and I used to make a hobby out of watching to see what people did
with their electronics when prepping for take-off. Laptops usually got turned
off, but rarely did I see someone turn their phone off completely. I'd see a
lot of people switch to airplane mode, then put their phone to sleep (a short
press on a button). I'd even see a lot of people who simply put their phones
on silent (usually when I'm sitting next to them; this is difficult to observe
from a distance). Behavior on landing is pretty telling as well. When you see
people texting and making calls immediately after landing, you know that their
phones weren't off completely. When you watch the person next to you take out
their phone and begin texting immediately, you know that the phone wasn't even
put in to airplane mode.

These scenarios were far more common than observing someone actually power
down/up a device.

I'd imagine that it is possible to get an estimate of the number of RF
emitting devices within range. I really wish the FAA would do a study of what
_actually_ happens on planes, rather than what the rules say _should_ happen
on planes, because I suspect the results will be much different than they
expect.

------
mmariani
Two days ago I flew VIE-MXP. I didn't turn off my iPad, nor my I put my iPhone
on flight mode. Yet, I'm still here typing this.

~~~
polyfractal
An asteroid didn't destroy civilization yesterday. Therefore, it follows that
an asteroid will never destroy our civilization.

I'm not a fan of "turn off all electronics" policy either, but your statement
is just plain silly.

~~~
mmariani
Did you read the article? They cite reliable sources that say this ban on
electronics on airliners is nothing but baloney.

Anyway, I'm honestly curious... Where's your favorite place, under your bed?

~~~
polyfractal
Did you read my comment? _"I used an iPad and I'm still alive!"_ is just about
the worst argument possible (for anything), for similar reasons that saying an
asteroid won't destroy the earth because it hasn't yet is a terrible argument.

It had nothing to do with the article (which I read) and my personal opinions
(which, you'll notice in my comment, I express agreement with the article).

This is just turning pedantic now, so apologies. I should have just down-voted
your comment instead of replying.

~~~
mmariani
No harm, no foul. Happy new year! :)

------
GotAnyMegadeth
I don't think I've ever turned my phone off/to aeroplane mode during a flight.

~~~
macspoofing
That's the ridiculous part (well, one of many). If wifi, or cellular signal
could detrimentally interfere with an airplane's operation, shouldn't a more
thorough check be done to make sure all devices are "off" rather than the
current polite warning? After all a terrorist could be watching YouTube...on
purpose!

~~~
lostnet
Of course it is harmless. But don't do it! It is part of a disinformation
campaign/honeypot. The flights to area 51 are full of people secretly
renditioned for watching youtube on commercial flights...

------
aw3c2
Linkbait (original) title, a relevant quote right from the beginning of the
text is "The F.A.A. has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane’s
avionics, but it still perpetuates such claims."

