Originally Posted by
dgwright99
You are also mistaken in claiming that a pilot can "tell" when a cellphone is on. Pilots may, in some cicumstances, observe phenomona that are charactieristic of cellphone intherference among other things but there is no cockpit instrument that could, with any kind of useful accuracy or reliability, distinguish between a cellphone powered on somewhere in the cabin and any one of a large number of other signals present in the envirnment whjen a plane is on the ground.
I agree, but isn't it possible, that since under certain circumstances the pilots can tell if a phone is on, the FA may think there is such a device? Not sure if that's lying or not. I do hate being lied to, but I would give them a pass on this one. Reasons being A: There is sort of an indirect device that can tell and B: The only people it harms are those trying to circumvent the rules.
As I said, the IEEE article I linked to is about in-flight interference which is different then the OP's complaint about Alaska asking to shut off devices early. Which I agree with, but federal rules allow Alaska to determine when to shut off such devices.