Originally Posted by
punktlich02
The Economist wrote on this subject last December:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/12/avionics
"Every airline flight you are on has at least a handful of mobiles, laptops and other electronic kit left in a standby mode or actively on, rather than shut off as aviation regulators and airlines demand. Every flight, in other words, tests the proposition that hardware carried on board by passengers disrupts the aircraft or confuses the crew with false readings from cockpit instruments.
And yet airplane electronics, or avionics to use the technical term, do not routinely squawk or fail. ..."
And the authority and expertise of
The Economist (or its blogger, apparently hiding behind the anonymous initials "G.F.") on this subject is what exactly?
The emphasised sentence shows just how little that blogger knows about this subject. Anyone who does even a modicum of reading on this subject will recognise the proposition to be clearly and demonstrably untrue; and not only that, many of the routine avionics failures are from unknown causes.
But how quick some people here are to swallow the suggestion and to accept it as true.