And yet the incident rate of crashes related to electronic interference is ZERO, despite rampant disregard of the "rule".

Also, they don't. Wifi is kosher on some flights, as are miscellaneous electronic devices (not designed to transmit, but have components that create RF interference nonetheless) above 10,000 feet on all flights.

Have you tried this? Is it simply a case of sending the VOIP or a VPN over port 80? I'd kinda assumed that the internet connection would be heavily firewalled.

There are many types of firewalls and no, I haven't tried this recently on US airlines. But I have done it on many other firewalls. Yes you can always run a VPN, but that may or may not be good enough depending on how high the FW goes. There are other methods.

The point is that data is data. They are obviously letting some data through to the clients, so you just masquerade your VoIP data to look like innocent non-voice traffic.

Airline Behavior shows there is No Risk
 

If there was a real risk of disruption caused by cell phones/electronics, would the airlines just leave things to chance, hoping that we all comply? I would think they would confiscate all electronics before boarding, if there was a real risk.

Why? They don't prohibit any other electronic devices which can clearly interfere. They only prohibit their use in flight.

Are you being deliberately obtuse? Isn't it obvious to you and anyone else who flies frequently that people cannot be expected to turn their phones off? Just like we don't trust people to not fire their guns in the cabin, nor trust them to not blow up their bottles of water :rolleyes:, etc.

Forget the FAA and airlines. It's the pilots life on the line too. They would not allow phones on board if they were worried about any problems.

There are many strong radiation sources impacting commercial aircraft throughout a flight:

- AM and FM radio towers pumping out tens of thousands of watts of energy
- Police/fire radio repeaters
- Active Cell towers that aircraft fly near and over (especially on landing)
- Radar

It seems like these sources of potential interference would be a much larger problem than a cellphone in the cabin.

I am one of those pilots. I've been an airline pilot for more than 20 years.

Cell phones can interfere with aircraft systems. I have seen such interference first hand. When everything is working properly, a single cell phone shouldn't interfere but things don't always work properly and we aren't talking about a single cell phone. The risk of having some phones on, but not on an active call, is relatively low but low doesn't mean non-existent. When interference occurs, it will not normally cause an accident, but it could. Things as simple as a burnt out light bulb have started a chain of events which led to airline crashes in the past. Reports of interference from passenger electronic devices are submitted regularly to the aviation safety reporting system (ASRS).

Aviation safety is about identifying and managing risks. There is a risk associated with the passenger's electronic devices, including phones. Measures are taken to minimize these risks in ways which are practical for the passengers. Confiscating all cell phones, computers, DVD players, etc. prior to flight is not practical and is not necessary. The risks can be managed in other, less onerous ways. The current policy doesn't result in 100% compliance but without it there would be a hundred, or more, active cell phones on many flights and nobody can predict what that much RF in the cabin might do. It would certainly result in a significantly higher risk of interference than what we have now and there's no reason to take the additional risk.

This idea that if there was any risk at all the activity would be banned demonstrates a naive view of risk-management philosophy. If such a strict risk-avoidance policy was used we wouldn't fly as there are always risks.

Those sources are much farther away than are RF sources in the cabin. The strength of the signals from the outside sources are much lower due to that distance.

Yet interference from those sources does occasionally occur...

I think you mean "unsubstantiated claims" about interference are submitted regularly. Without proper testing equipment on board and someone to perform those tests all you are left with is an unsubstantiated claim, not evidence.

I have personally seen Cat III testing (and a full range of avionics tests) being performed and troubleshot in a maintenance environment with the person in the flight deck talking on a cell phone with a remote engineer. If cell phones were such a risk to avionics equipment they would also be banned from all maintenance hangars where such certification testing occurred. They are not banned in such situations, even though you, as a pilot, are relying on those certifications to ensure that your equipment is working properly.

This pretty much throws out the window the concept that the ban on cell phones is anything other than an outmoded "safety" concept.



By the way, during the certification of major cabin upgrades a test flight is typically conducted with a large quantity of various consumer electronics spread throughout the passenger cabin, all operating in their normal modes, to test for just this type of problem. In the last test I was involved in there were over 100 devices spread throughout the cabin and no impact was observed by the flight crew. This was with 80 in-seat video systems up and running and 100+ portable consumer devices, including cell phones carried by the multitude of in-flight observers with no impact during the entire flight. Again, pretty much throws this concern out the window.

This is real world experience with testing equipment and test pilots on board, not some subjective "report" from a crew with no real evidence.

Yes, on every report I have seen of pilots claims of cell phone interference, it has never been proven in followup tests on the same airplane.

As for risk management and the impracticably, no one has answered my point about water, toothpaste and jelly doughnuts?

I mean exactly what I said. Few, if any, of the incidents are investigated further.

As a pilot, I would say that more than half of the avionics write ups that I see in the aircraft logbooks are not reproducible by the mechanics and are subsequently written up multiple times before the mechanics are able to get it fixed. Does that mean that the three, four, etc., previous anomalies were the pilot's imagination? No, it means that these things are unpredictable and very difficult to reproduce.

Yet they continue to occur, again, and again, and again. From that you conclude that they do not exist.

The only risk of using a cell phone during maintenance work is that an otherwise perfectly good airplane will fail a diagnostic test and the mechanics will waste time trying to find the non-existent problem.

Ah, that's the key to why the airplanes aren't crashing. We don't rely on the equipment working properly, we expect it to fail so that we are prepared on the relatively rare occasions that it does.

Re-read what I wrote on risk-management.

One successful test only shows that everything was working correctly on that airplane, on that flight. One test doesn't tell you anything about what can happen when things aren't working perfectly. If a successful test ensured perfect performance then there would never be any write-ups. Everything always works fine--until it doesn't.

And if a phenomenon can't be reproduced in a controlled experiment then it's what? Anyone? Bueller?

They should shut off the sun. It's a source of electromagnetic interference :)

I don't have the link handy, but I have seen on an FAA web site, confirmed cases of loss of ILS glide slope lock, and numerous cases of interference to intercom and air to ground radio communications from cell phones. I'll try and relocate the link.

+1,000,000

Banning cell phones in flight is the best idea ever... nobody is that important that they need to use a cell phone aboard a flight. People shouting loudly that they are on the plane is the most annoying piece of conversation!!! Do people need to communicate every piece of useless detail to everyone else? really?

If you have something that critically important to be communicated (life or death situation) i'm sure the pilot can radio that communication!

Intermittent.

I'm not going to defend inane conversation, but as a business traveler I dislike being cut off for the duration of the flight. Given that on most airlines in coach I can barely open my laptop, and I can't make phone calls, the flight time becomes wasted time.

If I could make calls I could use that time to advance my projects forward, attend conference calls and meetings, even sit in on training sessions - thinks I have to miss out on now if I happen to have travel that conflicts.

I agree. You know that EK allows phones to be used in flight, right?

BZZZZ. Wrong! The correct answer is: Unsubstantiated.

Millions of people swear up and down that they get fewer colds after taking vitamin C. Controlled experiments show zero effect. These people aren't lying, or necessarily wrong, but they are mistaking a placebo effect for a real one. Just as you're misattributing an intermittent, probably uncorrelated effect to external interference.

Live in the dream world if you must, but your assumptions are using faulty logic. Not unlike many of the pilots I know, you know just enough to make bad assumptions. When it comes to how the systems work in detail the maintenance folks actually do know better. You might be good in a pinch, but you do not see the same level of detail or the testing involved. There are maintenance display pages that you don't look at, and for good reason, you don't have the documents to help you interpret their meaning. There are many well known and well documented nuisance messages that will pop up on your displays that the maintenance manual is aware of, and, as known nuisance messages, are cleared without action. You may feel this is a repeated problem, but it is a repeated write up from pilots who do not know the real issues. Eventually the pilots stop writing it up because they are taught about the nuisance message from the last mechanic who signed it off.

Many pilots are very well trained bus drivers, but please don;t claim to be the expert in the details of each system. You know how to fly, not fix or maintain these systems and they are more complicated at the maintenance level than you, as a pilot, will ever know or need to know.

Not certifiable to be non-interfering and therefore will not be allowed ?

In aviation we don't allow potential risks until proven to be unsafe, we disallow potential risks until proven to be safe.

Interference is certainly possible. I see it personally a couple of time a year. It's there when the phone/device is on, or in a particular mode or activity, and gone when it is off. How many times do I have to repeat the on/off correlation cycle before I can say that the device is causing the interference?

The interference that I have seen personally is with the communication radio and cell phones. Mythbusters produced interference with a VOR navigation signal. The ASRS reports describe many different types of interference which comes and goes with the electronic device being switched on and off. How many examples must there be for you to believe that interference is possible?

I am not making assumptions. I am applying established risk-management techniques. You seem to believe that if one test shows no interference then interference is impossible. That is the faulty logic.

So you're suggesting that only one test of this has been performed in the history of commercial aviation?

Similarly, most new aircraft designs are subjected to only one "real" wing stress test (to 150% of maximum expected stress, continued until the wing breaks). On every flight should we therefore be worried that the wings will snap off, since only one test has been performed? Of course not. A single test in the context of decades of scientific and engineering research is more than sufficient.

OK, works for me. Design and implement a test which proves to the FAA that a particular electronic device is safe for in-flight use (in a particular mode of operation with particular accessories). Conduct said test for each and every electronic device you propose to operate. Don't forget to conduct each test on each device in each type of aircraft while you are at it.

Or, follow the current rule. The burden of 'proof' here is on the people whining about the rule, not on the airlines, the FAA, or even the device manufacturers.

You seem to think this is unreasonable, but it's exactly what is done for avionics to be certified.

You are clearly making assumptions, which leads to your faulty logic.

This issue is tested on nearly every flight in the world every day. I would venture to say that somewhere between 2-10% of passengers ignore this rule for cell phones, and almost 80-90% of people using computers will most likely fail to turn off their Wi-fi connection when using their computers in-flight. Since the introduction of cell phone more than 20 years ago this issue has been tested 100's of millions of times. Yet there is not one single crash linked to this issue.

So, 100's of millions of examples, no crashes. Seems well tested to me.


I don't know about anyone else, but I am not whining about this rule, I just ignore it, like many many others. There is no documented negative effect on me as a passenger, so why bother, unless you are one of those anal types that rely on "But, but, it's the RULE!!". Follow it if you wish, but I can guarantee that if I am ever a passenger on your flight my cell phone will be on and we will most assuredly land at the correct airport, maintain communications with the ground and not crash.

Rules are meant to be broken, while laws can only be bent:). Another member mentioned this earlier, but if it was a serious threat to the lives of the passengers and crew (not to mention a multi-million dollar airplane) phones and all electronic devices would not be allowed on the plane. But i'm sure most airlines would prefer we not bring anything with us anyway.

No. I'm talking about the one test that planemechanic related on which he participated. His assertion was that one test proves that interference is impossible. It does not.

Yet we are worried enough about it that we operate the aircraft within its published limitation envelope to ensure that the wings do not brake off. Even so, structural failures do occur so the original testing did not prove that such failures were impossible.

And that real-world testing produces a steady stream of ASRS reports of interference.

A burned out gear indicator bulb hasn't caused the crash of a widebody jet until the day that it did.

I hope your adherence to the rules and procedures is a bit better with regard to following the procedures in the maintenance manuals while you are performing your job. I'd hate to think that you only comply with the procedures and requirements with which you agree.

Gear indicator bulbs don't burn out on every single flight around the world each day, whereas I'd wager that activated cell phones are on board nearly every flight. Don't know why I bother making this point again, but if they posed even a 1 in 10 million chance of bringing down a plane, they would be banned. For all your condescension about risk analysis (to a group which includes at least one risk analysis expert, incidentally), this simple point seems to be lost on you.

I saw someone mentioned this earlier in the thread too. I never thought about it before, but it's a good point.

Moreso the various safety/security agencies than airlines, I would think If there was any real evidence cells could cause any significant issues they would not allow them on the plane for fear terrorist would use them.

Abagail

I made no such claim.

I said that in a real test involving much more electronic interference that you would ever expect to see in the real world that the monitoring equipment detected no interference. This is in contrast to your repeated claims of unverified interference by pilots. Your "reports" are all unverifiable and unprovable, while the test I was last involved in (and it has not been the only one) was verifiable and provable, and it showed no interference.


Sure, just as I would like to think that your piloting was based more on real world experience and not urban legends about cell phones causing airplanes to crash. You have no evidence that I do anything other than fully comply with all required maintenance rules, while we do have evidence that you are piloting while being concerned about myths that don't actually happen in the real world.

For example, here is a list of the last five air crashes attributed to cell phone interference:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Oops, notice the list is blank?

Their use in-flight is banned.

And from that you conclude that they are all wrong. That is an unreasonable conclusion based on the data. It is clear that the possibility of interference exists.

The only evidence that I have of your behavior is that you admittedly ignore regulations with which you disagree.

A mechanic should know better than that. We don't wait for a crash before applying risk-management procedure. We apply risk-management procedures in an attempt to prevent an incident or accident from happening.

1. There is no doubt that interference can, and sometimes does, occur. There are a steady stream of reports of such interference in the industry database that is setup for just that type of report, the mythbusters documented interference in their test, and many pilots, including myself, have seen it first hand.

2. When interference occurs, regardless of its source, it has the potential to cash an incident or accident.

3. Since cell-phone use is not required in flight, the safety action is to prohibit their use.

So should guns be allowed on planes, as long as their in-flight use is banned? Last I checked, guns are only dangerous if used.

The scientific method says that you make observations, create a hypothesis and then test your theory. You have observed something, created a belief and then failed to perform any tests. That is an unreasonable conclusion based on the real world observable data. I noticed you failed to post your own list of air crashes caused by cell phone interference.


You have evidence that I disregard one rule as a private citizen that is senseless and idiotic. That rule is disregarded my millions of others each and every day, 365 days a year, with absolutely no documented air crashes, no documented evidence of landing at the wrong airport due to "navigational interference", no documented evidence of any death or injury related to their use, no documented evidence of any security concern due to their being allowed in flight.

What you do not have is any evidence, other than your wild assumptions, that my personal activities carry over to my professional activities.



This Federally licensed aircraft mechanic does know better than you on this. You may understand how to fly, but you don't know how to fix or maintain or test these systems. Diagnostic self tests that can be done from the cockpit are always high level tests, they are not the end all be all of testing nor do they bring you to the actual root cause of any errors.


Well then, we should ban all sorts of items for which there is no evidence or proof that they cause any problems. According to you they may lead to an accident, so they should be banned. Where would you like to start? Point and shoot cameras? Many of them have bluetooth capabilities today. Laser pointers? They broadcast a focused beam of coherent light, they might cause a crash. There are many many examples of consumer products that have no history of causing air crashes, why not ban all of them as well?

Interference can occur, the point is that you have no evidence of what is causing it. Maybe its a solar flare? Maybe its electrical activity in the atmosphere? Lightning is only lightning once it is discharged with a flash, there is significant electrical build up in the atmosphere all the time.

The problem you have is fairly common, you are confusing correlation with causation. It would be just as easy to make the connection that every single commercial air crash has had at least one pilot on board. There is clear correlation between the presence of pilots and air crashes. But that does not mean that pilots cause crashes, just that they are always present. That is all you have, correlation, but no proof of causation.

A steady stream of incorrect and unsubstantiated reports does not prove causation.


Really? Mythbusters? They are your scientific evidence? What's next? A link to Wikipedia?


Please, list the air crashes caused by your assumed correlation. It should be easy, you seem fairly well wedded to your position.



Underwear is not required in flight either. And, just as with cell phone use, underwear has not been proven to be related to any air crashes either. Should we also ban underwear?

Methinks it may be time to stop, as they say on some message boards, feeding the troll :D

The question then would be, Which do you see as the troll?

The one who's getting a kick out of running both of us around in circular arguments

How would you be able to hear anything over the noise from the 10 cell phone calls around you?

More importantly, why should the people around you be forced to listen to your business/meetings/training?