Originally Posted by
Utskicat
As a DL Diamond and AF Platinum, and million miler, I saw something new today.
We landed in CDG about an hour ago. It’s extremely foggy here this morning. Prior to landing they announced that due to heavy fog and needing to use ILS, all phones must be physically turned off and not just in flight mode. They then did a walk through to verify phones were off.
What was comical was the majority of passengers and most of the crew had no idea how to even turn off an iPhone. (It’s vol up, vol down, hold side button, then slide on screen). The captain dinged the landing chime so the crew stopped their checks halfway through and took their seats. Whole excercise was assinine and a waste of time.
It’s been proven many times that there’s absolutely nothing invasive about a cell phone, especially in flight mode. Is this a new thing? Or just an AF thing I’ve never seen?
Surely you are an experienced passenger, but the reasons behind this rule of switching off phones completely eludes you. Which isn't a problem, but you might have had the humility to realise that it's a topic about which you know not a lot before declaring it a waste of time. It isn't. Barrelling with 65 tonnes of metal, electronics and people at 300 km/h without any visual reference - you wouldn't even know whether you are flying straight, banked, climbing, sinking - towards a narrow strip of concrete and trying to hit it at the right angle and the right speed, why leave phones on? Which by the way is a total waste of time as the signal they catch in the air is at best weak, absent normally, or maybe interrupted. Probably those phones do not interfere with the complicated electronics, sensors and software that makes sure the plane does hit the narrow concrete strip at the right angle and speed, but it's the kind of situation where "certain" is better than "probable".
Originally Posted by
PLeblond
Just a quick note. Almost every landing uses ILS, even if on visual with hand/foot flying, pilots usually use ILS and glide-scope for refernce.
If heavy fog, it was likly a CAT III B landing where the flight crew are basically passengers monitoring the systems until the wheels touch the ground... and then some. Its defined as: A category III B approach is a precision approach and landing with no decision height or a decision height lower than 50ft (15m) and a runway visual range less than 700ft (200m), but not less than 150ft (50m). So the flight crew are seeing the runway at the very last minute. There are some excellent videos on YouTube of Cat III B landings for those interested...
Personally, if the people in the pointy end would feel better performing this with peoples' phones off I have no problem with that.
Originally Posted by
fransknorge
Regular autoland CATIII landing, across several carriers (BA, LH, AF). As for judging it, well i guess the OP has done all research and has all relevant diplomas to overrule the process put in place by plane constructors, safety regulators and safety expert at the airline.
Originally Posted by
BubbaX
Yes, CAT IIIB. There's a way to tell, by the way.
If you're sitting in the first 6-7 rows of an A320-series aircraft, the autopilot disconnect sound is called the cavalry charge, feel free to run a web search and bring that sound up. Normally, you can hear the cavalry charge when established on the glide slope. On a CAT IIIB, after they make you turn off your phone, you hear the charge during the roll out.
Yes, thank you for the explanations. It was probably indeed probably a CAT IIIB or even CAT IIIC landing.
However, to add to the posts and maybe rectify a common misconception, which is mixing up
guidance and
who flies the plane or thinking that they are necessarily linked.
- Guidance: ILS - across the various categories of CAT I, CAT II and CATIII A-C - simply means that horizontal and vertical guidance is given from the ILS radio "beam" to the pilot's "instrument" (HSI), indicating where he must point the nose to hit the runway. It does NOT necessarily mean that an autopilot is used. To follow the ILS guidance the plane can be steered manually by the pilot or by the autopilot. Having said that, some of the CATs do require that the plane is steered by the autopilot; typically CAT III, but even that can differ from country to country, or airline to airline.
- Who flies the plane: since following the ILS guidance and using autopilot are independent in most cases, the switching off of the autopilot - and with it the cavalry sound - have nothing to do with ILS. Autopilots can be switched off before capturing the horizontal guidance, before capturing the vertical guidance, after it... whenever. Which is why the cavalry sound is not necessarily an indicator that the ILS vertical guidance (glideslope) has been captured. It's independent.