I doubt that one cell phone would interfere with avionics. But a likely scenario is 300 pax fire up their mobiles as the plane is on final approach to say, "I'm landing." Perhaps that'd send enough watts to turn the altimiter off by 6 feet?

Think of the roadside signs, "No 2-way radio broadcasting - blasting area." The 2 little wire leads on a blasting cap act as antennas. Yes, you might get through to the avionics.

On the other side, planes get hit by lightning all the time and just keep on chugging. Is there an EE on Flyertalk to 'splain what a cell phone can do that lightning can't?

So why do they allow everyone on the plane to use wifi on their laptop?

Six feet can be the difference between landing softly and ramming the plane into the ground, thus damaging a multi-million dollar piece of equipment.

Just saying.

Interesting thread. Just curious as to why you waited a year to post it?

My guess is lightning is broadband interference (i.e. its energy is distributed over the full frequency spectrum), but only for a brief instant. Cell phones emit in extremely narrow frequency bands and broadcast continuously. If this frequency band happens to be at a frequency that the avionics use, it therefore has more potential to cause sustained errors (i.e. the proverbial "altitude needle" is off by a certain amount for a long time, instead of just twitching when a lightning strike happens).

Also, it's easier to design electronics to ignore broadband interference (can detect simultaneous signal at other frequencies) than narrowband (looks just like the signal you're interested in).

I was waiting for someone to ask that;). New member of FT.

Welcome. :). It is an interesting thread. And good location.

Just as the DL gate agent in ASE said "I've never seen someone from EAT before"

"My colonoscopy last week indicated a polyp..."
"Can I get a refill for my Viagra? I'm out of town and..."
"No, you need to put Huggies on her at night. The daytime diapers leak..."
"I've looked at the numbers, and it looks like we will have to lay off Fred..."
"And how did his wife find out..."
"You've never had a root canal job? I have, and it goes something like this..."

The possibilities are ever so endless it makes my head hurts.

I did get a laugh or two out of your examples though^

Some of those sound moderately entertaining. All I ever get are interminable, boring business conversations like "So we need to re-run the numbers on the Anderson account, vis a vis the updated tax treaty ....", spoken in a loud, sloooow monotone :P

I see what your getting at, but that would be interesting for maybe twenty minutes max. A transcon flight with someone talking about how they spent there weekend would be annoying. Look up Alaska Airlines | "Chatter" on YouTube for a really good example.

what sort of pilot are you ? " everytime I fly with my cell phone switched on " what else do you accidentally forget to do ? :td:

Um, same sort as a driver who accidentally leaves his blinker on once in a while after a lane change. Cripes, no need to be nasty, everyone makes far worse mistakes. Are cell phones even prohibited aboard private aircraft flying VFR?

What a load of hysterical hyperbole. [just sayin' ;)]