Accidentally left cell phone on, connected, during 2-hour flight.

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Oct 12, 2009, 4:50 am

#46

mre5765

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Quote:

Originally Posted by BubbaLoop

I a m probably going to get slammed for this comment, but...

I don´t believe that using cell phone on planes will make them fall from the sky, but I dread the day in which they are allowed. Can you imagine sitting next to an unknown person for hours and having to listen to their incessant and usually completely stupid chatter without being able to walk away?

No, because at a certain altitude, cell phones won't work unless the plane has a cell of its own, and if it does, we can be sure the airlines will overcharge for the service such that the number of takers will be small. During the ten years or so UA had air phones, I made at most 5 calls, and the majority of those were free calls to SkyMall to buy stuff.

The odd text message might get through, but that's about the extent of it.

Oct 12, 2009, 4:53 am

#47

BubbaLoop

Join Date: Dec 2008

Posts: 1,444

Quote:

Originally Posted by mre5765

Sure hope you are right, and that I won´t be sitting next to the talker. Might trigger my inner terrorist and force me to clobber the person.

Oct 12, 2009, 5:10 am

#48

Janus

Join Date: Aug 2009

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Quote:

Originally Posted by mre5765

In a plane with 200 pax, what are the odds that every pax has turned his phone off? Close to zero. If 99.9% of all pax turn their phone off, then the odds all 200 have are 0.999 ** 200, the odds at one did not, are 1 - 0.999 ** 200 = 18%. Considering the number of planes that fly every day, if there was even a remote risk to cell phones causing planes to crash, then they'll be crashing by the thousands every day.

The question is not how many of the 200 have turned off their phone, but what would happen if all 200 left their phones on. I think every day we prove that a handful of phone that people forget to turn off won't bring down airplanes; but we have no data as to what happens when a plane full of cell phones, BlackBerries, iPhones, and laptop cards will do (not to mention WiFi, Bluetooth, cordless mice, and other wireless products). If the FAA ever removes the cell phone rule, that is exactly what will happen. I have no clue what, if anything, the combined radio power of a plane full of phones would do, but I imagine it "could" cause issues that are not visable with only 1-2 phones on.

Oct 12, 2009, 5:18 am

#49

Aus_Mal

Join Date: Dec 2004

Location: London

Posts: 6,265

Quote:

Originally Posted by mre5765

Where are these links to science between cell phones in a passenger cabin interfering with the electronics necessary to prevent a plane from crashing?

A good (although 2003) article from CASA (Australia's equivalent of the NTSB)

http://www.casa.gov.au/wcmswr/_asset...003/sep/33.pdf

Quote:

Originally Posted by mre5765

Did you know that nearly 100% of all planes that have crashed in history had a row 13, but planes were crashing before there were cell phones?

And nearly 100% of all planes that crashed had seats in the plane. It really is a false argument.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mre5765

BTW, did you know that airlines give every pax the ability to completely saturate the plane with electro-magnetic radiation, that every FA can easily detect it, and the airlines do absolutely nothing about it?

Headphones I'm assuming?

Oct 12, 2009, 7:45 am

#50

mre5765

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Aus_Mal

A good (although 2003) article from CASA (Australia's equivalent of the NTSB)

http://www.casa.gov.au/wcmswr/_asset...003/sep/33.pdf

FTA (not a good one btw):

Quote:

They hit the avionic equipment with microwaves of mobile phone frequencies.

IOW, they didn't actually test this with cell phones, which don't direct their transmissions at a specific point.

OTOH (from Wikipedia),

Quote:

Boeing performed extensive tests as reported in AeroMagazine's Interference from Electronic Devices in response to reports by flight crews of anomalies that they believed to be caused by electronic devices. The flight crews had apparently confirmed the effect by switching the "suspect" device on and off and watching the effects. Despite this, and despite the fact that Boeing in many cases was able to purchase the actual offending device from the passenger and use it in extensive testing, Boeing was never able to reproduce any of the anomalies.

The fact that several airlines are rolling out approved cell phone service by installing their own cell on board proves that this fear is simply rubbish. I suspect the set of people who believe cell phones crash planes are highly correlated with the set of people who believe vaccines cause autism.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aus_Mal

Headphones I'm assuming?

No the reading lamp above each seat emits electro-magnetic radiation that we call visible light. The light from the lamps themselves have never crashed a plane, though, considering how hot those things are (why aren't LED lights required in cabins?), it would not surprise me if they've caused a fire. Far more risk to a plane from that, than from a cell phone.

Oct 12, 2009, 8:39 am

#51

Aus_Mal

Join Date: Dec 2004

Location: London

Posts: 6,265

Quote:

Originally Posted by mre5765

The fact that several airlines are rolling out approved cell phone service by installing their own cell on board proves that this fear is simply rubbish.

The signal strength that a mobile phone outputs is directly related to how close a cell is to the phone. So it may be much safer in that scenario, especially since the connection from the cell will be properly isolated from other electronics.

Another interesting article by IEEE
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospa...any-airspeed/0

including:

Quote:

All in all, we found 125 entries in the ASRS database that reported PED interference. Of these, 77 were considered highly correlated, based on the description of observed PED use and interference occurrence. The reports included cases of critical aircraft systems such as navigation and throttle settings being affected. Based on the random sample entries from 1995 to 2001, we estimate that the average number of reported interference events might be as high as 23 per year.