Originally Posted by
JDiver
I think one thing about the electronic rules issue is that an expensive and extensive permitting process would have to occur and that is not likely to happen unless the airlines will be assured they will make a lot of money and the process will pay for itself and generate profit.
Also, the aviation regulating industry (FAA, etc.) are quite conservative - not that many years ago, and iirc Swissair claimed they had proof of signals interference, all sorts of CD players were banned from being turned on in flight. It may be the players of that day were "leaky" with significant IF generated that interfered with the old navaids, but the issue eventually went away.
In the end, AFAIK FAs are held accountable for enforcing the FARS and regulations applicable to electronics - and if an FAA inspector is aboard and they fail to enforce, they will be written up (see previous posts). skyladycan correct me if I am wrong, of course.
In a former life, I worked on interference and radio signal compatibility issues involving aircraft/avionics. There is a real threat, but the extent of the threat depends on the specific equipment installed and the quality of the wiring (antenna placement makes a difference, too). In most situations, the threat is minimal. But even between two similar aircraft from the same airline there may be issues in one and not the other.
IIRC, there are (still) compatibility issues between wifi (GoGo equipment) and certain EFIS units used in the cockpit.
At the time I was working on the issue, interference rejection standards were minimal. That's likely changed over the years, but the process is slow. Higher power "stuff" (e.g. cell phones/cell data) is much more likely to cause issues than low power "stuff" like wifi. In general aviation planes, there have been issues noted with cellphones interfering with GPS - heck, there were issues on some early GPS installations where the aircraft's own COM transmitters interfered with GPS.
You're correct that the FAA and RTCA are very conservative.