'Hi shell.....yeeeah Im on a plane. I SAID ON A PLANE! Going to Majowca innit. Hello? HELLO? '

Followed by constant 50cent/beyonce/*insert random 'urban' track here* ringtones and text message alerts.

... why people felt obliged to yell into their mobiles, until someone explained to me that mobile phones, unlike regular landline phones, don't provide feedback into the earpiece. In a landline phone, what you speak into the microphone is played back to you through the earpiece, thus discouraging you from yelling into it (as you'd get an earful of your own words). But in a mobile phone, this doesn't happen, presumably for some fiendish technical reason.

I certainly don't look forward to mobiles on planes for that reason. Maybe they could charge very high rates for calls but very low rates for texts?

Scene: Upper deck, seat 62K, blinds down.
zzzzzzzzz
zzzzzzzzzzz
zzzzzzzzzzz
zzzzzzzz
RING RING RING RING
YABBER YABBER YABBER
Oh, $*&$*&#%*$&%#*$&*%#*&$*&*&

I'm afraid they do, but the credit disappears like billy-o and probably even faster at MOL rates.

Mobile phones are worse than all most conversations because:

* Conversations don't have ring tones
* Conversations can't be used to play crappy grime/garage/RnB at high volumes
* Conversations have 2 or more parts, which just make them less irritating
* Conversations don't break up resulting in the aforementioned belowing of 'hello, hello'

Plus it is much more difficult to get away from an irritating idiot on a plane.

Personally I think the whole idea is vile. I actively love getting away from my phone when on board, and find it very odd when people reach to this as if they are having a limb amuptated. Still, yet another reason to avoid Liarair.

Indeed. I'm pleased you have noticed this phenomenon as I thought I was the only one to notice gangs/groups walking around the shopping centres one with their phone playing something awful.

I don't think Ryanair has 62K though

I was just expressing my opinion, in case someone in Waterworld thinks that they need to copy the idea...better to nip that thought right in the bud, eh? I personally don't care what M'OL gets up to!

I must be missing something here. What purpose are mobile calls on planes actually fulfilling. For busniess just have wi-fi on board (no skype allowed), chat thru msn (no skype) or email. For non-business calls then I can't for the life of me think where the benefit lies for all parties (and third-parties) involved. It's just another unwanted service telecoms/internet companies think we should have - because it's another way of making green.

"Hello!! ... what?? ... Yeah, I'm on the plane!!... it's rubbish!!"

with apologies to Dom Joly

Hello,

there was a notable statement today on the press:

"If you want a quiet flight, use another airline," said Michael O'Leary, chief executive. "Ryanair is noisy, full and we are always trying to sell you something."

I think this confirmes all my prejudices about O'Leary-o-flot and it's customers. Yes, I use other airlines, and I'm proud to be able to pay for them.

What would be next? Promotions for infight-flights ...ohm... inflight-fights?

Surprised, but not amused:

Patrick

Unfortunately, the presence of extortionate mobile roaming fees acts as zero deterrent to some of the pond-life that can be found on the end of a Nokia in Britain today...witness the numerous stories in the summer silly season headlined "xxx red-top's intrepid journalists uncover true extortion of calling home for holiday Brits" etc. etc. (the question of why the illiterate feckers don't read their pricing plan is curiously left unanswered...)

Personally, I hope BA install airtight booths for phone-using customers.

This could be interesting. I think it had to happen no matter how many of us don't want it to happen. In theory, having phones on the plane should not be that bad but people do have a habbit of talking loudly because:

i) They're obnoxious and want everyone to know how important they are.

ii) Or they are technically illiterate and do not realise that shouting doesn't make that much of a difference with the GSM CODEC.

In practice, I find I can be perfectly well understood when talking fairly softly (even when on the bus, talking to my dad who doesn't have the world's best hearing).

Now, while I wouldn't entirely approve of phone use on the a/c, I would love to be able to use my Blackberry.

Perhaps the clue is in "illiterate" and "read"?

I am sure that MO'L would just love me to be on the phone when down the back of his aircraft dictating the latest safety violation to the office so that the Irish CAA could get hold of the information before landing. I have not had to do it for a couple of months, but there again, I have not flown Ryanscare for a couple of months. Perhaps they might be related?

Ah, most of you are so young.... not to remember the phones in the seatbacks of BA aircraft all those years ago.

I did use a seatback phone to arrange for the FAA heavies and FBI to turn up to arrest somebody on a flight once. Greyhound One departure from PHX to PDX for him to get home.

As you have noticed, what was deemed unsafe, suddenly becomes safe when there is money involved. Actually, the banning of phones was related to a couple of specific issues. Firstly, the phone companies did not want all the phones polling lots of different stations. So, the authorities banned it. There was a reasonable amount of research done to demonstrate that most aircraft post 1968 did not suffer too much interference. The fuel indicators in the 146 bounce around a bit and the Dash 8-400 seemed to think that there was a fire in the baggage hold, but ....

Perhaps the second reason was historic. There were indications on board a certain aircraft, cannot say who operated it, but the registration G-OCAA may give indications, which was using a basic old GPS unit (and they were not approved for it at the time by er, the CAA) and this led to a navigation error of a couple of hundred miles. Of course, the fully qualified pilots did not happen to notice for a while. (Urban myth or true story, you decide )

Modern GPS and other navigation units (as well as flight management systems blah blah) do not suffer from this, and installed properly, it should not be a problem.

Still, now Boeing has decided to kill off Connexion by Boeing, then the sky might be a quieter place after all.