
Europe approves use of in-flight electronics during take-off and landing - poissonpie
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/14/europe-approves-electronic-devices-take-off-landing-easa-caa
======
flexie
How many flights take off or land with all passengers and crew members in full
compliance with the current rules? Close to none.

Say commercial planes have 60 passengers/crew member in average. 5 don't have
any devices (small kids). Of the 55 passengers that have one or more devices,
maybe 30 turn off their devices as they are told, 15 put them on airplane mode
and 10 don't give a shit or just forget it.

If there are 20 million flights per year there have been some 400 million
flights in the 20 years where cell phones have been common. 400 million
flights of which 99 percent have flown with some passengers' phones turned on.
Has there ever been a single flight accident due to cell phones? Just one?

~~~
steeve
My understanding was that it hasn't to do with phones being turned on per se,
but rather one's attention at the moment the flight is the riskiest: at take
off and landing.

The rationale was that when you're playing on your device, you're paying less
attention to the crew and what's around you, which can be problematic in case
something bad happens and you need to react.

EDIT: I'm just the messenger, guys ;)

~~~
Sambdala
My understanding is that's the common ex post rationalization that arose to
try to come up with a plausible-sounding reason for this idiotic rule.

~~~
JonnieCache
My favourite theory was that cellphones above the clouds could connect to too
many cell towers at once, making triangulating your location impossible.

Conveniently forgetting that they have a live update of your exact position
from NORAD/FAA/etc...

~~~
Zigurd
The "too many handovers too fast" thing might have been a problem in the '80s,
and I have never heard of a documented case of that.

~~~
mikeash
My understanding is that the problem isn't with the speed of the handovers,
but rather with the fact that the horizon is a major block to radio signals,
and the horizon is much farther away when you're at altitude.

Older networks were designed around the fairly reasonable assumption that a
cell phone would only ever be able to talk to adjacent cells, because anything
farther away would be over the horizon. So you might be able to talk to both A
and B at the same time, but you couldn't talk to C without first losing
contact with A.

Raise the phone a few thousand feet in the air and this assumption goes out
the window, confusing the network. There's an amusing story of a pilot who
called up his family to let them know he was almost home and ended up getting
billed for the call (at expensive 80s rates) a bunch of times because several
different towers all thought they were running the call.

There's certainly no problem today, anyway.

~~~
Zigurd
> _Older networks were designed around the fairly reasonable assumption that a
> cell phone would only ever be able to talk to adjacent cells, because
> anything farther away would be over the horizon_

That can't possibly be true. Spectrum re-use in distant sites could in theory
have some effect on the call but differences in signal strength would make
significant effects unlikely.

Also, that story about the pilot must also be apocryphal. A handover is a
handover, and there is only one "winning" decision. Not to mention that CDRs
don't work that way.

Lots of civil aviation pilots use mobile devices in the air without problems
for the user or network.

~~~
mikeash
You may be right about the story, but I don't really see the obstacle to it
happening. If you initiate a call in the air, you could easily not be able to
communicate with the cell directly below (since they don't radiate much signal
upwards) while being able to talk to two that are adjacent to it. Since those
two cells would never have a reason to communicate in normal operations,
confusion ensues.

I know that lots of pilots use mobile devices _now_ , but we're talking ~30
years ago.

------
obiefernandez
I was recently on a transatlantic flight during which our Boeing 767's right
jet engine caught fire and blew out. It was a terrible experience and I can
assure you that at least for the first 5-10 minutes nobody on the plane was
buried in their books or personal electronics. Everyone was suppressing panic
and desperately paying attention to whatever shreds of information we could
get from the flight attendants. The whole excuse about wanting people to pay
attention during an emergency is total crap. Once your body kicks into
survival mode the last thing on your mind is your phone.

~~~
alexholehouse
Holy crap. That's terrifying - where were you when it blew out? How did the
staff (pilots and stewards/stewardesses) behave - I've always wondered how
well anyone, no matter how much they were trained, would cope in a real
[potential] emergency on an aircraft?

~~~
ghaff
Many years ago, I was on a 747 when an engine blew out (by which I mean a
column of flame came out of the engine--no exterior physical damage). As I
recall, they didn't say anything about a problem at first but the plane
diverted to the nearest airport which happened to be Kuwait; this was long
before the Gulf War etc. 747's have four engines though so this was possibly a
less serious problem than on a two engine plane.

~~~
mitchty
I can't find the quote, but it was from a pilot of one of the first commercial
2 engined airliner jets, 737 or 777 I forget.

Basically the reporter said, are you more worried if you lose one engine of
two versus one engine of four on the 747/707/etc. To which the pilot replied,
losing an engine is always a serious problem. Maybe if we ever get to my
copilot saying we've lost engine 43 will it be a non issue.

More engines just means more chances for failure. All I know is losing any
engine isn't something you treat lightly.

~~~
ohazi
Old ATC joke:

A military pilot called for a priority landing because his single-engine jet
fighter was running "a bit peaked." Air Traffic Control told the fighter pilot
that he was number two, behind a B-52 that had one engine shut down. "Ah," the
fighter pilot remarked, "The dreaded seven-engine approach."

------
joeyh
Seems clearly to have been done in reaction to, or in cooperation with the
change in the US.

I wonder why no European or other country got out in front and made this
change earlier?

~~~
bergie
We have a shared Aviation Authority in EU in the form of EASA, so this isn't
something a particular European country could do on its own.

------
venomsnake
Not that someone was obeying those rules anyway. But better to make it
official.

~~~
mseebach
Yes they were. Flight attendants consistently ask people to put away their
Kindles and iPads.

Of course they didn't and couldn't check if the devices are completely
switched off (or even in flight safe mode), but they very much keep people
from using them.

~~~
viraptor
Flying mostly from/to the UK, that's not exactly what I saw. Most of the time
people will put the device on their lap with the screen turned off and get
back to using it as soon as the flight attendants are in their seats. Pretty
much the same thing with "please leave your seatbelts fastened until the
engines are off" (with click, click, click all around).

~~~
CaptainZapp
I observe the click-click-clickers too and believe they are monumental idiots
that not only endanger themselves, but other passengers as well. And all this
for no good reason at all.

Watch the video, taken by an amateur in JFK, of an AirFrance A380 touching a
smaller plane and spinning it around and imagine you where sitting in the
small plane not buckled up:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-
canada-13054205](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13054205)

The reason why this behavior mystifies me so much is that by jumping out of
your seat prematurely you will be leaving the plane exactly 0 seconds earlier
as when you remain buckled up until the plane is safely parked at the gate.

~~~
yread
Not to mention turbulence, which can pick you up, bang your stupid head on the
luggage bin so that it cracks and then throw you back in a seat. This seat
might not even be yours and you injure other people with your stupidity. See

[http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/05/travel/sg-airlines-
turbule...](http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/05/travel/sg-airlines-turbulence/)

or

[http://avherald.com/h?article=45946d01](http://avherald.com/h?article=45946d01)

------
wil421
I have been doing this for years on my gameboy/sega/iphone/ipad/mac. I even
turned my airplane mode off to see how long it would take to loose service
last time I flew. (I dont fly very often)

~~~
matiasb
How long does it take? On my last flight the man sitting next to me started
receiving SMS many, many meters before landing

~~~
codfrantic
I was a passenger sitting in the co-pilot's seat on a small plane in Africa,
the pilot was texting during the flight even at 10,000 feet ^_^.

~~~
hgh
I had a similar experience, small plane over a relatively hilly area in
Zambia. It took me a bit to get past the assumption that the vibrating around
my leg wasn't a structural problem with plane....

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adeptus
I've always wondered why they had this rule in the first place. Each wireless
device by FCC rules (or equivalent dept in each country) must operate withing
a designated RF frequency range.

One would think that pilots would use a frequency range that would be in the
private (not public like Wifi 2.4/5.x Gh) range and thus never be overlapped.

What am I missing?

~~~
noselasd
> What am I missing?

So there is a few reasons.

Flying is serious business. You don't want to take any risks having your metal
box carrying a few hundred people fall down. You really do not.

Aircrafts are also pretty complex, and the parts, electronics, engines, wires
and so on are undergoing heavy testing and verification before you use that
part to build an aircraft. This is quite unlike consumer devices such as
mobile phones, which just have to pass the minimum government tests to be sold
to common people.

As there's numerous different mobile phones, with all sorts of radios in them,
it's too hard to test/verify that none of them interfers with any of the
electronics your airplane has. (I'm sure you've heard the recognizable sounds
in a nearby speaker on an incoming call/SMS on a GSM phone - these devices
really do influence other electronic.)

The easy solution is to just ban them, and require them to be turned off,
because even if the chance is ever so small, you don't want to risk your plane
full of people to fall down.

Once that policy was in place, many many years ago, it takes a lot of inertia
to change. No executive wants to be the one making the decision and a few days
later learn that something quite bad happened.

Add in the bonus of not having passengers be annoyed at the neighbour chatting
away at the phone, and the passengers being more attentive during
takeoff/landing.

~~~
CamperBob2
_Flying is serious business. You don 't want to take any risks having your
metal box carrying a few hundred people fall down. You really do not._

Sounds like an excellent reason to prohibit bringing untested electronic
devices onboard in the first place.

The fact that such a prohibition is not in place means that the whole thing is
just so much security theater.

------
eitally
I just got home from my first trip since the FAA changed their rules, and it
was really quite refreshing not to be able to continue using [non-radio]
devices. Among other things, I think it generally calms the passengers and
makes them less unruly.

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sciguy77
Skymall is fucked.

------
btbuildem
Such a bunk rule anyways. If there was the remotest chance of a phone / kindle
/ whatever interfering with in-flight systems, bringing any electronics
onboard would be expressly forbidden. They'd take them away from you at the
security screening (like they do with the extremely dangerous water bottles
and nail clippers these days..)

------
bitops
As long as they never allow anyone to talk on their cellphone during flights,
I'm happy.

