Often1

+1 - There is a time and a place for everything. There is also a reason why the Captain is in command of the aircraft. If he is wrong, so be it. There is a way to deal with that. But, this is not a matter of civil disobedience.

Hopefully, the vast majority of safety and security precautions taken were never necessary. If only one had a crystal ball (and it worked), life would be so much easier and the cranks on FT would have so much less to do.

Globaliser

Are you saying that aviation safety works on the basis that action should be taken to reduce the risk posed by something only when there is confirmation that incidents have been caused by it?

KRSW

Does anyone know which frequencies are used?

I know VHF for voice coms, 1090MHz for ADS-B... but what else is in play?

Global321

Didn't say it. Didn't imply it. Read the end of my post above. (Post #59)

All PEDs must be tested to ensure they do not interfere with AC electronics. The PEDs you use on your flight have been approved for use during the entire flight. Airlines can add any rules they want for any reason they want, even if the reason is not based on any facts.

r00ty

Vhf generally for air band.that is voice and vor/ils. 108-136Mhz. Ads-b you're right but irrelevant in this case. That would be uhf.

Hf for out of range comms and ndb. Again irrelevant for landing. I think there is a microwave landing

Now I've heard ba request "microwave" landing which is apparently in the 5ghz range. Not sure about that though.

It's nowhere near as simple as that though as per my last post.

N1120A

The turn off rule on autolands is less to do with actual interference from the electronic bit, but to make extra sure no radio frequencies are accidentally being used.

wxman22

Global321 asked a simple question. I'll paraphrase because evidently it was not understood by some.

Does anyone think that if a PED could ACTUALLY interfere with any aircraft systems they would be allowed on board at all?

With hundreds of OEDs on thousands and thousands of flights every day, when the cabin crew asks that they turned off or in airplane mode, do you really think that the compliance rate, voluntary or not (I turn off my phone, but then later discover is it on) is 100%.
Nothing is ever 100%.
So that means that with the most diligent oversight, a couple of PED are probably non-compliant on every flight in the world at any given time.
Therefore, it there was ANY risk at all, the items would be banned from the cabin, just like the multitude of other items that are banned.

Globaliser

Life and aviation safety are not binary.

Pascoe

Ha - you beat me to it. In other fields this is called 'expectation value' I believe. And in general terms is pretty central to modern operational risk thinking. Hence it doesn't matter to people designing SOPs just what the probability of a given risk factor is - if the consequence of a failure event is high enough, then any value greater than zero will render that risk intolerable.

And in the use case central to this (somewhat fractious) thread, that might be eg a CAT3 autoland. Now whether that's 3A, B or C, there's not a ton of room for error if the system inputs are compromised, and nor is there much time for the pilot to take over again. Frankly there's probably a good reason why the pilot isn't flying the aircraft his or her self at that point. So the thinking is that anything that can't be categorically ruled OUT of compromising that, is a no go.

Which is why we get the regs and SOPs (whether dictated by the CAA / FAA or whoever or airline specific ones) lagging well behind the advances in safety of the technology. Because in the conservative and litigious age there's a huge disincentive in moving fast.

PUCCI GALORE

If I had to chose between an aircraft, on which I was flying, making a safe landing, and the sort of people who feel that they need to update their Facebook - I would, of course, start arguing whether teh CAA or the Captain knew what they were doing.

Ancient Observer

"Does anyone think that if a PED could ACTUALLY interfere with any aircraft systems they would be allowed on board at all?"

YES!!! I do.

I worked for a short time at a place where they proved that a PED could interfere. NOT that it necessarily would, but it could.

Given that a plane is a large tube flying cos the speed of the air over the wing is different from the speed under the wing, that "could" is more than enough for me.

Global321

Based on my own experience of seeing people texting, on the internet and phones rining during takeoff and landing, I would guess there are 1000's of devices transmitting/receiving every day on flights.
(But being the rule follower I am, I tend to follow whatever instructions are given.)

PED in the cabin...the answer is NEVER HAS and CANNOT. The 'could' scenarios created are always some crazy experiment on the ground with no basis in reality to grab a headline. (Never has and cannot doesn't make the news. )

Globaliser

Well, I'm glad that you have all the expertise necessary to decide this definitively. Who needs experts? What a waste of space and money!

Global321

Thank you. And you are right - complete waste of space and money.

Waterhorse