First Cellphone Use On Airplane Given OK

s31523 writes "With over 1 billion cell phone users worldwide, and with so many business travelers, using the cell phone on the airplane has been a recent hot topic. Emirate airlines is announcing they will give the OK for cell phone use on their planes, making them the first airline to do so. The FCC and FAA still ban the use, but are working to determine safety implications, if any."

Anybody Try to use one on a plane?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Tough to keep a signal at 500 kts and 36000 ft.

Lying airlines (Anybody Try to use one ...)

[mi (197448)]

Tough to keep a signal at 500 kts and 36000 ft.

These concerns are between the cell-phone users and their service-providers. Governments and airlines need not interfere. The etiquette (or lack thereof) of chatting for hours is similar.

Airlines and the governments have been lying through their teethes to us on this and other matters [economist.com] for a long time... It is good thing, someone is finally breaking ranks:

Please switch off all mobile phones, since they can interfere with the aircraft's navigation systems.

Re:

[FirienFirien (857374)]

I remember an earlier post here something like a year ago, when one person left his phone on while in his two-seater (mechanical control = less worry about getting bricked out of the sky even if you're pretty sure it shouldn't interfere).

He mentioned he got a cease-and-desist-please letter from his provider, because his phone being in contact with so many cells at once was causing their network to shit itself.

As mentioned above - the problem is that, unlike wifi, the cellphone is designed to hand off sea

To those confused

[MindStalker (22827)]

To those confused, the real problem with cell phone use on airplanes is that you are traveling so fast that you are switching towers once every minute or so. One person is fine, millions doing it (which is what would happen if legal) would be a HUGE strain on cell phone networks. Airlines are installing cellphone tower equipment into their plane to eliminate this problem.

That is all class.

Re:To those confused

[fdrebin (846000)]

The other problem will be ME going postal when the impolite person sitting next to me yaks and yaks for 5 hours straight on a flight.

OK, I won't have a firearm, but I am large, strong, and will have become extremely psychotic.

/F

Re:

[fdrebin (846000)]

More like the WASP [wikipedia.org] answer to excessive provocation.

Perhaps my comment is best viewed with a sense of humor... It was intended to convey displeasure, hopefully to not actually predict the future.

/F

Re:To those confused

[ari_j (90255)]

I was looking for your comment - I would have posted the same thing (maybe in a bit less friendly tone). There are already enough things on planes that piss me off without the addition of 200 people loudly asking "Can you hear me now?" for the entire flight. In a similar vein, I have started a practice of turning in all unattended bags in the gate area to airport security. Most unattended bags are left by annoying people in the first place, so having those people miss their flight because they failed to heed the repeated warnings about leaving their bags unattended has a positive effect on my flight. ;)

Re:

[ari_j (90255)]

I have a cell phone. I am rarely without it. I have in the past carried up to three phones. That doesn't change my feeling that they should not be allowed in planes any more than smoking still is. As to the annoying people in the gate area who do not leave their bags unattended, I haven't figured out a way to get them left behind short of the rapture. If you know a way, post it here. Thanks!

Earplugs won't work...

[MS-06FZ (832329)]

Earplugs are good at muffling excessively loud sounds, particularly keeping them from damaging your ears. But you can still hear them.

People need to make two changes to their behavior in order to resolve this:
1: Be conscious of what effect your cell phone conversations, etc. are having on others, and be reasonable. Be courteous to them, and maybe don't talk on your phone in a crowded space.
2: If someone else is annoying you, confront them about it, but be polite. Getting them angry won't solve the proble

Re:

[Admiral Ag (829695)]

The problem with this is the sheer number of selfish assholes in the world. It's bad enough on trains, but being stuck on a long haul flight with these bastards would be too much.

I would never dream of holding a loud phone conversation in a quiet restaurant, or recklessly endangering people by using one while driving, or holding up a store queue by answering my phone while at a counter, or leaving the ringer on during a symphony or an exam because "my calls are important".

Yet I have seen all these things ha

Re:

[Bassman59 (519820)]

going postal when the impolite person sitting next to me yaks and yaks for 5 hours straight

Your only defense will be noise-cancelling earphones. It's not clear whether society has figured out all the rules of propriety when using a cell phone.

Noise-canceling headphones only work with steady-state noise, such as the low drone of the aircraft as it flies. It can't do squat about someone's voice.

Re:To those confused

[Dun Malg (230075)]

you always get some jackass who talk at top volume on their mobiles for hours

Anyone ever figured out why people talk louder on cellphones? Are they actually talking louder, or is it just a perception we have? Is it because on of their ears isn't available to hear back their loud talking so they compensate? A J. Seinfeld would say, "What's the deal?"

Regular phones have what is called "sidetone", which is your own voice coming out your earpiece. This is the natural result of all parties on a landline communicating on the same circuit. This feedback mechanism essentially allows you to monitor your own volume level by letting you hear what the other person is hearing. Cell phones, on the other hand, do not have sidetone. Your outgoing voice and the other party's incoming voice are on two separate channels. Since people are not "trained" on the use of cell phones, and are even somewhat programmed by landline usage to expect sidetone, they exercise little control over their volume levels. Since the automatic reaction to not hearing your own voice clearly in a sidetone system is to speak louder, the ones that really shout into their cells are mindless morons who are allowing their programmed behavior on landline phones to happen on their cells.

Basically, it comes down to this: if they're speaking above a normal conversational tone on a cell, then they're unthinking fools who can't adjust to lack of sidetone because they're too stupid to realize it's not there. The world is full of unthinking fools.

Re:

[Shivetya (243324)]

and I was worried that the pilots would be yacking and not flying

Re:

[eln (21727)]

Well I hope they've at least solved the problem of autopilots deflating while in flight. Or, at the very least, I hope they've moved the air intake nozzle somewhere other than the belt buckle. After all, you can't smoke on planes anymore.

Re:

[vtcodger (957785)]

Good post, but may be a moot point with current cellphone technology.

My frequently faulty memory tells me that somewhere -- probably here on slashdot -- in the last year or so there is a link to an article about a test of cell phones on aircraft in flight. At low altitude the cell phone worked fine. At higher altitudes -- above a few thousand feet -- connections were not so good.

Here's a link to an article (not the one I had in mind) about some 2003 tests in the vicinity of London, Ontario using sever

Re:

[eln (21727)]

You probably have a CDMA phone. GSM phones, such as those used by Cingular, cause interference with various noise-emitting devices. My desk phone at work always buzzes about a second before I get a phone call on my Cingular phone.

Re:

[jrockway (229604)]

You trust the Mythbusters? They do stunts for movies, not actual science.

Here's an article from the IEEE Spectrum: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3069 [ieee.org].

Re:

[MindStalker (22827)]

Actually if you havn't noticed most all hospitals now let you use your phone in most areas.

Good news for Bose

[wbean (222522)]

Sounds like good news for Bose; there are going to be a lot of people buying those noise-cancelling earphones.

Re:Good news for Bose

[devilspgd (652955)]

Actually, they don't do a fantastic job of blocking voices. In my experience it's actually easier to hear conversations using noise canceling headphones then without, since the headphones cancel out the other background noise.

Re:

[Abcd1234 (188840)]

Nah, what you really want are a pair of canalphones. Personally, I have a pair of Shure's which were a godsend on my last flight, when I got to experience two cowboy-types behind me spending a full hour talking loud enough for half the cabin to hear them...

Keep the ban for the sake of quiet

[Retired Replicant (668463)]

I don't care if they determine that there is no need to ban cellphones because of interference with plane electronics -- I'd still rather the ban is kept anyway in order to keep flights from turning into cacophonous gab-fests. Flights are already uncomfortable and headache-inducing anyway...lets not make them noisy as well.

Re:

[WormholeFiend (674934)]

I'd *much* rather listen to cellphone chatter than high-pitched informationless shrieking.

How do you know those babies arent trying to communicate something about the bad airline food, the moran pushing/kicking on the back of the seat, someone's B.O./fart wafting through the cabin, etc.

If flying wasn't bad enough

[tulmad (25666)]

Because if being crammed into coach wasn't bad enough, now you can be crammed into coach next to some asshat having a loud conversation on his phone for the entire flight. Sounds like a damn good time!

Considering the way. . .

[smooth wombat (796938)]

the vast majority of people drive while on the phone, I don't think I'd want to be on a plane with a pilot who's on his cel phone the whole time.

Oh, you meant the passengers. I'll pass. I really don't need to have an entire flight filled with, "Guess where I'm at! Yeah, it's great! I can finally use my phone to call you from somewhere over [insert country/state/territory/ocean/whatever]. So how are things going? You get that urine problem taken care of."

Re:Considering the way. . .

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

You will be communicating with via a cell inside the plane. This leaves you with two choices:

1. Pay a huge premium for the privilege of using the plane's cell, or
2. Pay a huge premium for using the phone installed in your seat.

Either way, it's likely to be so expensive that only real idiots would use it just to say "Hello! I'm on the plane!" I've flown quite a lot this year, and I don't think anyone used the in-seat phones on any flight I was on.

Counting down...

[Stanistani (808333)]

If this becomes common on US airlines, look for "plane rage" incidents to spike upwards.

Can you imagine trying to endure a long flight seated next to one of those insecure, nonstop-talking, loudmouth cell-junkies?

Re:Counting down...

[Hoi Polloi (522990)]

I doubt it. After being readied by your pleasant trip through security where you begged for your insulin back, the comfort of flying with your knees crushed into the back of the seat in front of you while a kid kicks the back of your seat will sooth your troubled soul. And if that isn't enough you can eat your bag of pretzles (only on select flights) on your tiny tray. Then you can join the 10 person long line to the toilet only to get to the front in time to be ordered by the flight attendant to get back to the your seat because they'll be landing in 1 hour.

No, I see no passengers being bothered by this.

Re:

[Stanistani (808333)]

Ah, but you never know which straw is the one that finally blows out the camel's back, do you?
Let's hope at some point airlines and our security apparatus will try to improve the airline travel experience.

Enabling cellphone use on airliners ain't it.

Re:

[lymond01 (314120)]

I was in front of this guy a few years back. He's on his cellphone, talking to his credit card company. He's trying to be quiet about it, but ends up giving them his full name, card info, mother's maiden name, and some password (I was surprised by this last one until I tried to talk to my own CC company recently...they were looking at the wrong account which apparently needed a password to access. When I gave them my account number again, my account wasn't password protected.).

So I've already had my pad

Health and safety issues

[ShadowEFX (152354)]

I hope one of the health and safety issues they look in to is the effect a cell phone has on a trachea when forcefully inserted by an enraged passenger tired of hearing the unfortunate cell user blather for five continuous hours...

Re:Health and safety issues

[zoftie (195518)]

Thats what earlugs are for. :) I think they should mandate though microphone masks, so they keep their sounds to their face. Or something like talk booths where they go and talk all they want.

Re:Health and safety issues

[OldeTimeGeek (725417)]

I'd rather the make the offending caller use a Cone of Silence [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Brett Buck (811747)]

>I hope one of the health and safety issues they look
>in to is the effect a cell phone has on a trachea
>when forcefully inserted

      Trachea?

      Brett

Does it mean...

[ifchairscouldtalk (1031944)]

... that I can play Snake on a plane now?

Issues are technical, not just regulatory

[bugnuts (94678)]

Let's ignore the issues of cellphones interfering with the flight controls. We'll ignore that search for a random cellphone on some oriental airline long ago, purported to be messing up the landing.

From what I understand, cellphones work by associating themselves with "cells" of coverage. The closer they are, the less power they use, and so on. When the user moves cells, the network switches them over to the new cell.

From the air, a cellphone will see many, many different cells as being equally good. It will also have to switch across cells much faster than normal. Without the plane itself acting as a roving cell tower for the occupants, it seems to me that this would cause a lot of problems. Not only will all the cellphones be transmitting at full power, but the network will potentially have to handle many many more switches cell to cell, and faster than normal. There's evidence of this from TFA when it said some upscale, long-haul airlines are installing equipment onboard that will allow for cell phone use.

I'd love to hear from anyone in the business that could shed more light on these technical issues, and whether they are as big of a problem as I suspect if airlines were to just say "Sure! Use your phone!"

Re:

[pilkul (667659)]

Quite right. This is why airlines are installing cellphone "tower" equipment inside planes, which will neatly bypass all those issues.

Re:Issues are technical, not just regulatory

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

With a cell site in the plane, your phone will go into low power mode and just talk to it, not any of the towers on the ground (in theory, at least). It may see other towers, but won't try to switch to them, because they will be weaker signals than the one a few metres away.

The cell in the plane will communicate with a base station somewhere, probably via LEO satellites, without interacting with the rest of the phone network. Once the call reaches the ground, it will be routed accordingly. Equipment for the second part (getting the calls to the ground) is already in many planes for the phones you will find built into seats. The only difference is that now you can pay a lot to use your own handset, instead of theirs.

Cellphones don't endanger planes.

[bananaendian (928499)]

This "Cellphones in Airplanes" type of article appears periodically in /. and every time I have to rise from my grave to correct the false speculation about cellphones interfering with avionics.

Cellphones do not cause aircraft to crash and burn! There. Thank you.

Here's my longer explanation for those interested: Avionics ABC [slashdot.org]

Airlines offering the use of GSM cellphone services equip the cabin with a basestation similar to one used RF-secure buildings and underground facilities. It will handle all the calls within the cabin and connect to the phone network via satellite datalink. It's all compatible, safe and tested method that has been used for years now on business jets.

Re:

[thpr (786837)]

Your prior post is interesting, detailed, and well-informed reading, but you fail to address an existing, published study [cmu.edu] stating that cellphone use on aircraft may be dangerous.

Re:Cellphones don't endanger planes.

[bananaendian (928499)]

Your prior post is interesting, detailed, and well-informed reading, but you fail to address an existing, published study [cmu.edu] stating that cellphone use on aircraft may be dangerous.

I'll address this again then.

The study says there is an 'increased risk', 'higher than was previously thought'. What they did, was find that more often than thought before people's cellphones were on during critical parts of flights. They also found that laptop wifi and bluetooth were emitting RF. All they actually did was log the spectrum from these emissions on some flights. That is all their research found.

Now, what they imply is that this is somehow more significantly dangerous then we previouly thought. My essay [slashdot.org] I think covered most of the things why this is not so dangerous.

However I want to stress here the fact that any potential emissions from consumer RF-devices in the cabin will have a hard time competing with all the structures and shielding between the device and the antenna outside the aircraft or inside in the avionics bay. And no such device can dream of competing the awesome power of the spectrum from a fairly common natural sources, such as static build-up and lightning, under which such avionics have to perform on a daily basis.

And if people are already leaving their cellphones and laptops on during flights by accident, where's the harm in allowing them to use them during flights in a controlled and tested environment. This might actually help people remember to turn them off more often during takeoffs and landings.

Bring back separate sections...

[LGV (68807)]

...only this time instead of smoking/non-smoking, we need cell phone and non-cell phone sections. Or better yet, talking and no talking sections.

New reality show

[DreamingReal (216288)]

"What do you get when you sit 120 people in seats designed for Erkel for 4 hours with 2 bathrooms, no smoking, available alcohol, and constant cell phone use?

Aluminum-Tube Deathmatch at 36,000 Feet!

Premiering this July on SPIKE TV!"

First you will hear this really stupid tune

[nephridium (928664)]

Then you will witness an endless flow of words that apparently just won't ebb down: "Yea, hello? Hello? Hello? Yea, can you hear me? Hello? Can you.. Yea. I can hear you. Yea, the reception is lousy. The reception. The RECEPTION. RECEPTION. Yea. Uh-huh. Yep. Yea, I'm in the airplane now. We can now make calls from the plane, ain't that great? Yea, we took off just a couple of minutes ago. We TOOK OFF. Yea, I'm actually calling you from the sky, I'm like god, except that I have a better ring tone [hysterical giggle]. Ah, nice we're getting dinner now [makes hand movement to stewardess (inquiring about his culinary preferences) indicating he's in an important conversation]. Yea. Yep. No, haven't eating for hours, it's great that they serve dinner now, I'm starving. How's the dog? [...]"

A man was brutally killed yesterday aboard flight AA322. Police reports indicate there was no connection to a terrorist plot. According to an eye witness "he was just a really, really annoying guy with a cell phone."

What about other electronics?

[AlpineR (32307)]

I don't care about being able to use my cellphone, but can I please use other electronics on the airplane?

I'd love to listen to my iPod for the entirety of my flight, not just the half hour between reaching cruising altitude and beginning descent. Ideally I could put the earbuds in when I sit down and keep them while we taxi, fly, taxi, deboard, and collect our luggage. The flight attendents would treat me as a terrorist if I did that now.

Not exactly news, but CNN thinks so

[eggboard (315140)]

Emirates said months ago that they were going to add this service, which uses an on-board picocell and relays calls very expensively very satellite. Should run at least US$2.50 per minute for calls. I wrote about this in The Economist back in September (not Emirates news): RyanAir will launch in-flight calling by the second half of 2007 on hundreds of its planes. That will be the first major deployment.

Re:

[soft_guy (534437)]

When the President is flying coach on Delta, we'll take your point seriously.

Re:

[Dynedain (141758)]

Did I say I am making those calls? Did I say I want to annoy you?

No.

All I am expressing is that there are people that need to be able to be reached anytime, anywhere, and that the statement "Nobody is so important they can't be unreachable for a few hours." is completely false in the modern world.

Re:I'll be happy when they allow 'other' things

[winkydink (650484)]

I wish you would be allowed to sleep completely flat (as in a bunk like a ship would be good enough for me). Would be great for trans-atlantic flights. I fly quite frequently and changing hours, planes and means of transport make me kinda tired. The average flight is 18 hours, with delays 24 hours of eyes-wide-open travelling fun.

Most airlines provide this on long-hauls. It's called First Class.

I also wish they would allow you to have sex on an airplane. Might not be for all Slashdotters, but as a frequent member of the High Mile Club,...

Beating off in the head doesn't get you into the Mile High Club.

Re:

[mark-t (151149)]

It's always been technologically possible to make cell phone calls from the plane, it's just not actually ALLOWED.