S314KY

I leave my QC15 on during takeoff and landing and am always surprised that they don't mind the green light especially when I sit on the left side of the aisle. I always am sleeping as well so they might not think its worth the effort - wake me up and then scream while my noise cancellation headphones are doing what they are supposed to do.

brp

Yes, clearly. Otherwise you'd likely not have brought up a completely irrelevant analogy since overloading of a wifi node has nothing whatsoever to do with instrument interference (on an aircraft of elsewhere).

Cheers.

gemac

Of course you are a specialist. Just not a specialist in anything remotely related to this topic. You are most definitely our go-to sundae specialist.

Spiff

Show me the peer-reviewed evidence instead of the fringe hypothesis, please.

jaimelannister

I'm successful keeping my noise cancellation headphones switched on about 90% of the time. In fact, yesterday I was asked to turn them off during landing.

Every time it happens I decide I need to open them up and disable the green indicator LED, but then I go 10 flights in a row without an issue and forget about it.

brp

To hell with peer-reviewed. I'd settle for some actual field theory analysis (and this is directed at all posters, not just the one you cited). A while back I did some analysis of the impact of such devices in the F cabin (close to the electronics) and, while I don't recall the specifics (and don't want to repeat it ), the result was that the impact of a pretty large number of devices on the instrumentation could be shown to be negligible. Realizing that the energy radiates spherically, and only one direction matters, is enough to show how quickly this will dissipate. And that's just for starters.

Cheers.

Spiff

Dr. brp, your conclusions are mathematically sound.

I agree that the energy radiated by the harmonics of the operating frequencies in the far field will be effectively zero.

brp

Thank you Dr. Spiff. As I know that you have particular expertise in this field, I consider my post to be peer-reviewed to the highest order

Cheers.

IflyonAA

It really isn't a stupid rule.

Takeoff, Taxi and Landing phases are the most critical in flight. It is during these phases that the attention of passengers is of utmost importance. If there is an emergency, passengers need to have 100% situational awareness otherwise a plane cannot be swiftly and safely evacuated if necessary due to confusion which leads to panic.

If passengers are listening to say, ACDC on their ipod or they are watching an action scene of the Bourne Supremacy passengers are going to not be prepared if they have missed a pre-emergency briefing from a captain. The crew is going to be too busy to go through the plane to find out who heard the captain and who didn't.

Rather than to have one rule for one device and one for another which is rather difficult to implement, the simple solution is to apply the rule across the board.

I don't find it much of an inconvenience. Read the American Way instead.

Score8

Strangely, I agree with the previous post, with an exception...I would stipulate to not listening to a movie or a song during those takeoff and landing periods for safety's sake. This would of course be a 'no-headphones' rule.

However, there should be no prohibition on reading a kindle or ipad book or doing anything else 'soundless' during takeoff and landing. That's no different from taking the MENSA quiz in the American Way (which I do tend to get better at as the month goes on - go figure).

All that said, this still doesn't address the fact that a sleeping passenger would break the rule of being attentive. (no rule against that, I think, except in the exit row during the instruction acceptance)

Microwave

This reads great on paper, but it isn't the reason given for the ban on electronic devices, therefore it's not a relevant argument IMO. The reason given is that electronic devices can interfere with aircraft systems. If portable electronic devices can cause interference that may affect the pilots' ability to safely operate the aircraft, they should remain banned, otherwise they should be permitted. After all, earplugs aren't banned during takeoff; neither are eye masks. Keeping passengers's attention is a different matter altogether.

Now this seems to me to be at the crux of the argument. To me it's patently obvious and demonstrable that many if not most pieces of equipment that fall under this catch-all category of "portable electronic devices" would not cause any meaningful interference even if there were hundreds of them. Kindles for example, especially if wireless features are turned off, use almost no power and therefore emit almost no EM signal that could cause interference. iPads and the like would also cause very little interference, especially with wireless turned off--though we've all had times when we forgot to set airplane mode on our iPads and we arrived to our destinations in one piece... Indeed, iPads are being certified for flight deck use, and part of that certification is proving that they don't interfere.

The thing is, though, that FAs shouldn't have to walk through the aircraft with a list of devices that are safe and have to compare each person's piece of equipment with the list. As true as it is that iPads are almost certainly innocuous, it's also possible that a similar-looking unit could cause interference, and it would be impractical to prove case-by-case which are safe and which are not. So, to err on the side of caution, all are banned. What frustrates me about this is that people who may want to intentionally interfere can still power on electronics surreptitiously, so there's serious doubt in my mind about whether the rule actually makes us safer.

With all of that said, I'm personally quite on the fence. I would definitely agree though that electronics is definitely lower on my list of travel complaints.

And BA, for example, ban both electronics and headphones during takeoff and landing. They also alter cabin lighting depending on time of day for takeoff and landing. Compared to AA, where one can definitely use unpowered headphones to continue watching seatback IFE all the way to the gate if it's been left on and no FA will stop you, and cabin lights are whatever they are irrespective of time of day (at least in my experience). No, the personal electronics rule definitely is not in place to enhance passenger situational awareness.

feitefrank

I don't want to speculate, but it seems not entirely unreasonable that crashing the plane and/or putting it on fire, sounding the evac alarm and opening the doors, might lend it self to resolve any attention deficit in the cabin.

ExpatExp

Great news.

mikeef

OP, I hope you got the name of the FA(s) who ignored the electronic devices.

Please PM them to me so I can send them a couple of those appreciation/AAplause/Whatever-they're-called certificates.

Mike

chiproos

Shoot I hope I don't open up a can of worms here but here goes anyway....

Personally I think the electronics rules are a bit silly however they are the rules for whatever reason and in my opinion should be followed.

All too often I see people (especially up front) pushing the envelope and ignoring the FA's plea to turn off all electrical devices. I honestly don't think these people leave their devices on to protest what they feel is a silly rule. I feel more likely these are "very important" middle management business travelers full of self importance and entitlement who probably get little respect elsewhere. It's their way of saying that they are more important than the rest and rules don't apply in their case. These same icons of industry are the ones who have to shout on their cellphone while at the gate to impress the rest of us lowly folks LOL.

In conclusion, I say regardless of how one feels about the validity of the rule, it's the airline's rule and should be followed. Otherwise one might feel the ban on carrying weapons on board is a "silly rule" and we would have chaos. Don't like the rules don't fly.

Just my opinion.