Originally Posted by Michael D

I think everyone should turn off any electronic device when they are instructed to turn off be it for safety of the flight or the 'self-esteem' of a 'particular' crew member(s). (This is not a jab at you or crew but just a statement of fact. And just to allay equal opportunity concerns, there are many more passengers with 'self-esteem' issues than crew if for no other reason than statistics.)

That being said I always wonder how/why/etc things work. Any consumer commercial portable computer which weighed, as you said, more than 10 lbs was manufactured before 1990 and did not have WiFi, BlueTooth, etc. So if the computer were being used during the flight when computers are allowed to be used during the flight, it wasn't transmitting radio signals aside from noise, if it were a consumer device. If it were not a consumer device I would worry about why someone was flying with such a device, especially if it were post 9/11 and it was doing strange things to the plane.

As to turning something off and seeing something go back to normal, turning it on and watching it go abnormal, I can tell you that in a complex environment, such as an airplane, this is an indication but not proof of cause and effect. I have spent many man hour weeks during my graduate studies playing that game. I would think this was an anomaly particular to that flight or it wasn't a standard old computer.

I wouldn't fly or fly on a plane if I thought someone making/trying to make a cell call or clicking on some other consumer electronic device were going to interfere with the planes safety. You notice I repeat consumer and the allusion is obvious.

If a passenger's lawyer could overrule all the acronyms you know/list then I think the issue is not safety.

My point is these violations are happening hundreds if not thousands of times a day and planes aren't crashing/etc. Of course we don't know about how many 'close calls' were caused by such violations but my guess is that since 'close calls' and/or not 'close calls' have not exponentially increased as the adaption of these device have on planes that it is not significant.