First Cellphone Use On Airplane Given OK 305
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."
Re:To those confused (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Cellphones don't endanger planes. (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Health and safety issues (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Counting down... (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Good news for Bose (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If flying wasn't bad enough (Score:2, Interesting)
What about other electronics? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Counting down... (Score:3, Interesting)
So I've already had my pad of paper out for a few minutes, I jot down all his information. When my stop comes, before his, I stand up, make a show of tearing the page out of my notebook, fold it up, and hand it to him. "Be more careful," I tell him, and walk off.
And I'm not sure why some people talk so loudly on the cell phone. I don't fly often, but I agree with others...let people text or something, but no calls please.
Re:To those confused (Score:5, Interesting)
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?"
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:Can we keep it banned? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Cell phones are not a major threat to air safety. (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, I know... Mythbusters showed that a hugely amplified transmitter placed practically on top of the instrumentation could have a measurable effect. There was little even remotely cell-phone-like about the experiment at that point.
Do you really think that after all the Draconian (though mostly useless) security checks they put you though at the airport, the FAA would just say, "oh well, there's this real threat posed to flight avionics by cell phones, but we'll just ask the airlines to have flight attendants smile and ask passengers to put their cell phones in 'Airplane mode' when they hand out pretzels"?
No, they wouldn't. If they really thought that planes might go down from cell phone transmissions, they'd make you take out your cell phone battery at security and place it in a lead box with a key and then they'd scan the checked luggage compartment for cell signal and empty your socks and underwear on the tarmac in search of offending devices.
Does anyone seriously think that of the thousands of flights and hundreds of thousands of passengers that fly in the US every day, not a single one of them receives an SMS, voicemail or email during flight? Likely billions of cell phone data/voice packets find their way to and from cell phones sitting in planes during takeoff, flight and landing every day.
It's not crashing flights.
Re:Anybody Try to use one on a plane? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 seamlessly as you travel between cells. Think of 802.11s, wireless mesh networking, which measures signal strength and reconfigures the shared network to suit. If you have one box racing across the grid at high speed, it'll be reconfiguring hard and fast as the signal strengths change and it works out where the box should fit at each given instance. If you have 50, or however many you'd normally have on a commercial airline, the system will shit bricks. Routing packets outwards is easy - to route inwards you need to know where to send to, and if you're going fast enough then you're racing the sum of (signal (negligible) + processor cost of working out where you are + switches + rerouting + collision detection...)
On a lighter note, if you have a satellite phone you're probably ok.