As mentioned in the comments for the post, and as I can remember in recent flights, if you drop your phone you’re supposed to alert the cabin crew immediately. Now I understand why.
The announcements are a failure because they DON'T SAY WHY. Nobody is going to take it seriously unless they're given a reason to. People might think it's about their fingers getting pinched or something.
We need a word for uselessnessification. WTF are they afraid of, that they omitted the critical information from the announcement?
The reason is that many people have flying anxiety and saying stuff like "this could potentially cause a fire on the plane" will trigger it by having them imagine worst-case scenarios (that are additionally extremely unlikely to happen). I've heard "Well they shouldn't be on a plane if they're so anxious" as a response, but that is not a workable solution.
The safety announcements are already full of worst-case scenarios, like cabin depressurisation, emergency landing and evacuation, and landing on water.
That's not really true: they never say the word 'crash', and even the way that they phrase things make them seem more mundane than they actually are. You do need to know how to operate your mask; you don't need to know every possible way the plane might burst into flame.
Less of an issue in economy seats seats but in new business class seats or suites there’s the possibility for a lot of crushing and grinding of the battery of the phone with the mechanical moving components of the seat.
I had it happen to me once but as instructed didn’t move the seat (had to move to another one for landing as it was stuck in the lie flat position).
After landing the maintenance crew had to completely dismantle the back of the seat but they found the phone. The pilots and crew were obviously a bit annoyed as they couldn’t disembark the aircraft with me still on board. But much better result than having to declare PAN PAN.
The mechanical linkage of the seat can crush the phone and cause the battery to ignite.
It would be helpful if the announcements eluded to this, as a pax I’m not going to want to bother anyone especially if i think it’s just another dumb pointless rule.
> especially if i think it’s just another dumb pointless rule
FAA rules are written in blood. They may be overbearing and often tedious, but they are far from dumb and pointless. Those rules are from other government agencies.
Is the "all devices must be put in flight mode" rule written in blood? Everything I've heard suggests it's not necessary. I agree with your general point though.
I think it is written with blood from a scratch. I spoke to a pilot about it a while back, he said in the early days (either because of less EM shielding or different phone design or something else - not sure) this really interfered with e.g. the landing radio aids. While it never caused a crash, it was mighty annoying and distracting, and in the wrong circumstances could have lead to a crash.
He's not saying the rule is pointless. He's pointing out that the announcements FAIL to explain that this is an important safety issue, leading passengers to BELIEVE that it's no big deal.
They should say don't move your seat or you may shatter your screen, most people have never seen their phones explode but most know how much a oled replacement is these days
I was recently on a flight where they packed a half full flight so that half the passengers in the front of the plane and half in the back. The middle rows were completely open and they told us the plane would crash if we sat in them.
The airline charges money to let you choose your seat, and obviously, no one had paid.
There is an FAA rule saying you have to listen to safety instructions from the flight crew, but apparently there is no rule saying that crew members can’t issue blatantly false “safety” orders to prop up the marketing department’s numbers.
The more airlines abuse this, the more people will assume that new FAA rules are also bullshit.
Might be time to look up Center of Gravity then. Most of the time, it doesn't make a massive difference. However, in some rare or extreme circumstances (like literally half the aircraft being empty), loading can come in to play. This affects things like where and how luggage or pax are loaded.
Not knowing why it's a rule, and being too self-righteous to look it up, doesn't make it "blatantly false".
Air Canada announcements specifically say "inform a member of our crew immediately as it may pose a fire hazard". I guess it varies from airline to airline.
The tickets are bought already, and you mention also the cabin pressure loss, what to do in case of an emergency landing and watering.. most airlines here also pretty explicit about battery devices going smokey, and noone freaks out, so that is really not the concern?
Well, anything remotely refering to flight problems is cut out of inflight movies.
Even Qantas cut the scene in Rainman where Raymond histerically doesn't want to board an airplane since Qantas is the only carrier that never had a fatality.
Plenty of people freak out and create safety issues and distractions. Anything you say during the safety briefing, you're making a tradeoff between slightly preparing sane, attentive passengers better and increasing the worry of anxious passengers.
Two ways -- first, as already a couple other people mentioned, the battery could get crushed in a hinge; and second, a phone which is turned on and wedged between two cushions might overheat. This second danger is why modern phones are required to detect overheating and preemptively shut down -- but it's going to be decades before the FAA will want to assume that everyone has phones with that safety mechanism built in.
Specifically I think the issue is that if people drop the phone while reclined and then return the seat to the upright position to sit up to be able to reach down more easily, if the phone is in the wrong place it can get bent enough in the mechanism to compromise the battery pouch inside (which hopefully only makes it heat up and smoke but it can potentially catch fire, and fire is one of the the worst things to have in the cabin).
This isn’t hypothetical, they put this in the safety talk since it has happened and obviously by reports like this, continues to happen!
How plausible is it that somebody would crush a phone deliberately, considering that it involves only items already allowed on board? Or a team of people doing this throughout the aircraft?
A good point. Maybe it just shows a.) how much of what we are required to do is security theater b.) that it does not reliably work in making an uncontrollable fire so that is why it is not used as instrument of terror. I've accidentally opened a couple of batteries while repairing phones and they did not burst into flames, though I remember furiously googling and putting them in a bucket of water outside after a minute or two.
Can we please stop the "hUmaNitY aDdIctEd to PhOnEs" meme?
They're devices that are highly valuable (both monetarily and how much hassle it would be to lose it due to all the 2FA tied to it) and indispensable for modern life. They're not just toys, "addiction machines", entertainment etc. - and even if they were, despite what some puritans think, there is nothing wrong with entertainment if you're sitting in a plane for hours.
Prohibiting phones on flights completely would likely be a great way to cut air travel in less than half, because it would become too much hassle to bother with for many.
Requiring them to be checked would result in massive theft, and while it would reduce the risk of fire, any fires that would happen would have a much higher risk of being catastrophic. There's a reason why power banks are required to be in the cabin.
I have never paid more than $250 for a phone, and I hope I never will.
> all the 2FA tied to it
It’s not the brightest idea to use phone for 2FA, precisely because it’s so easy to break or loose a phone. Fortunately, 2FA algorithms are open and there’re equivalent desktop apps.
I don't work in this field, why are you asking me? I just thought it was amusing how we're allowed to take these phones, and yes I was making a nod towards people being very addicted to their phones these days.
But if I were to speculate, I mean performance shows have yonder bags today. They could be checked in with the rest of luggage in special boxes that you pick up at luggage claim.
They're banned in checked luggage, yes, but this would be packed by the airport authority into specialized luggage compartments.
Shampoo isn't designed for human consumption, yet I can take up to 1 L in 100 mL bottles through security.
The liquid rules were introduced in 2006 in response to a foiled terrorist plot involving explosives in soft drink bottles. But if you have 1 litre of liquids in small bottles, can't you just combine them to end up with a bomb?
One wonders that, if a phone can slip in, could a finger also encounter an unfortunate fate in the same place? In other industries, there are things called "pinch points" in machinery, and they are usually clearly marked and shielded, with attention paid during design to minimise them when possible. Even something that is only human-powered can produce a dangerous amount of force via the multiplication of levers.
It's been a long time since I've been on a plane, but I do remember that the seats seem to obviously be optimised for weight savings, so minimising pinch points and/or guarding them is clearly not a priority.
I suppose a finger is typically attached to a hand and won't slip down a wide-ish gap, which is nonetheless too narrow for the whole hand, to retrieve the phone.
That doesn't necessarily mean the finger would get stuck in that gap.
Reminds me of the one where a camera was accidentally wedged between the seat and the stick, pushing the nose down without the pilots realising. Why can these seats move during flight…
This was a passenger seat, they're adjustable for comfort.
Pilot seats also move during flight because you get into and out of them. Crews change seats several times on a long flight to allow them to sleep while others are flying.
Because the pilot not being able to adjust their seat for 8 hours is a bigger risk (being irritated by something for 8 hours is quite a distraction/stress factor) than allowing it to move during the flight.
