Originally Posted by
DeaconFlyer
Absolutely nothing. If there was any convincing evidence that cell phones had a chance of disrupting important systems, you would not be able to fly with them.
Agreed.
I remember sitting at a Networld/Interop in a wireless seminar given by Craig Mathias, a well-respected wireless expert. I asked him about the cell phone/plane thing and he just chuckled a bit and said that always comes up. He went on to explain that he discussed this at length with Boeing engineers and one of them summed it up nicely: "Do you honestly think we'd design a plane that could be brought down by someone simply having their cell phone on?" One of the big reasons, he said, was that wireless systems weren't designed to see so many towers simiultaneously and the handoffs would cause a lot of problems, assuming that at altitude the phone would actually be able to connect.
Looking at one of the old aircell maps, you'd see that there actually aren't that many towers for them to minimize handoffs.
I also think that a large portion of the ban was to protect the monopoly airlines had on phone calls. A lot of money to be made when someone needed to make a call.