You can still get whacked in the head by an iPod even if the power's off.

Bump.

Today on one of my flights the pilot announced just before landing that there seemed to be a cell phone on and would the owner kindly turn it off as "you are endangering the lives of everyone on board".

This announcement was repeated several times, each time with more and more frustration in the pilot's voice. We landed safely anyhow after all that.

I was on an A320-200 btw. I wonder what kind of interference the pilot might have been experiencing for him to keep announcing this?

He should have appealed to the passengers, not the miscreant. "If you're sitting next to somebody with a cell phone on, please press your call button." "If you're sitting next to somebody who is sitting next to somebody with a cell phone on, please press your call button." "If you're sitting next to somebody who is sitting next to somebody who is sitting next to somebody with a GD cell phone on, please press your call button."

(Apologies to Robin Harris)

Could have been someone forgot to turn off their phone before tucking it away somewhere, couldn't hear it ring in the overhead or whatever.

When I had a phone that liked to escape from its holster, I always put it in my carry-on once aboard. Arrived at destination, took it out to call my ride and realized it had been on the entire three-hour flight. No staff complaints though: T-Mobile GPRS, Boeing 737-300.

From NASA Aviation Safety Database
 

These excerpts are taken from a paper published in Spectrum, the journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The full article is at:www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/3069

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There is no smoking gun to this story: there is no definitive instance of an air accident known to have been caused by a passenger's use of an electronic device. Nonetheless, although it is impossible to say that such use has contributed to air accidents in the past, the data also make it impossible to rule it out completely. More important, the data support a conclusion that continued use of portable RF-emitting devices such as cellphones will, in all likelihood, someday cause an accident by interfering with critical cockpit instruments such as GPS receivers. This much is certain: there exists a greater potential for problems than was previously believed.

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Consumer devices that meet FCC emission limits can exceed safe interference limits set by the FAA for avionics, because the FCC and the FAA do not harmonize their regulations.

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In March 2004, acting on a number of reports from general aviation pilots that Samsung SPH-N300 cellphones had caused their GPS receivers to lose satellite lock, NASA issued a technical memorandum that described emissions from this popular phone. It reported that there were emissions in the GPS band capable of causing interference. Disturbingly, though, they were low enough to comply with FCC emissions standards.

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