The Billionaire Space Race Is Making Life Difficult for Airlines (bloomberg.com) 152
On Feb. 6, Elon Musk's SpaceX launched its largest rocket into the blue Florida sky. Onboard was "Starman," a dummy strapped into the billionaire's cherry red Tesla roadster. Minutes later, fans cheered as Musk topped himself by nailing a simultaneous landing of the Falcon Heavy's boosters. It was arguably a turning point for the commercial space age. Airlines were somewhat less thrilled. From a report: On that day, 563 flights were delayed and 62 extra miles added to flights in the southeast region of the U.S., according to Federal Aviation Administration data released Tuesday by the Air Line Pilots Association, or ALPA.
America's airspace is a finite resource, and the growth of commercial launches has U.S. airlines worried. Whenever Musk or one of his rivals sends up a spacecraft, the carriers which operate closer to the ground must avoid large swaths of territory and incur sizable expenses. Most of the commercial activity to date has been focused on Cape Canaveral, the Air Force post on Florida's Atlantic coast, where Musk's Space Exploration Technologies and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin base their stellar operations. It is one of 22 active U.S. launch sites, and a number of other locales -- including Brownsville, Texas; Watkins, Colorado; and Camden County, Georgia -- are pursuing new spaceport ventures to capitalize on commercial space activity.
America's airspace is a finite resource, and the growth of commercial launches has U.S. airlines worried. Whenever Musk or one of his rivals sends up a spacecraft, the carriers which operate closer to the ground must avoid large swaths of territory and incur sizable expenses. Most of the commercial activity to date has been focused on Cape Canaveral, the Air Force post on Florida's Atlantic coast, where Musk's Space Exploration Technologies and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin base their stellar operations. It is one of 22 active U.S. launch sites, and a number of other locales -- including Brownsville, Texas; Watkins, Colorado; and Camden County, Georgia -- are pursuing new spaceport ventures to capitalize on commercial space activity.
Technology advances and the world changes (Score:5, Insightful)
The airlines need to adjust and adapt, just like everyone else.
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Why should the airline have to lose money so that SpaceX can make money?
This is where some government capitalism should set the right incentives.
There should be a tax put on airspace. It could be based on volume, area, and time.
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He also can't do no unions.
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Re:Technology advances and the world changes (Score:5, Insightful)
By all means, let's charge SpaceX for the use of airspace.
But, if we do that we should charge the airlines as well - after all, why should they get subsidized by being given a free ride? It's not their airspace after all.
Go ahead and make the proposal - I bet you the airlines stop complaining so fast the silence creates a sonic boom.
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By all means, let's charge SpaceX for the use of airspace.
But, if we do that we should charge the airlines as well - after all, why should they get subsidized by being given a free ride? It's not their airspace after all.
We already do charge them per mile in fuel taxation. 21.9 cents per gallon on Jet fuel, 19-something cpg on AvGas. The more you burn, the more you pay.
Next daft idea.
Re:Technology advances and the world changes (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should the airlines desire to make money supercede other business' access to the airspace? SpaceX isn't making money at the expense of the airlines. The airlines are losing a trivial amount of money because they haven't accounted for the airspace not being entirely theirs.
And yes, $70/min * 8 minutes * 568 flights = $318,080.00 is trivial to airlines. The average passenger count on a domestic flight is 90 (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-amount-of-passengers-on-a-plane) and the average per passenger profit for a domestic one-way flight is $17.75 with an average profit margin of 9% (http://time.com/money/5158363/airline-profit-per-passenger/). So the average per-one-way profit is 90*$17.75 = $1597.50. That multiplied by those 568 flights is a profit of $970,380.00. Well maybe ~30% of profit isn't paltry. But, those 568 flights only account for 2% of the 28,537 average daily US airline passenger flights (http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_total_number_of_US_commercial_flights_daily). That $1,597.50 profit per flight multiplied by almost 30,000 daily flights equates to an industry daily profit of $45,587.857.50. Of that the $318,080.00 the airlines "lost" so the Falcon Heavy could launch comes out to a, yes, trivial 7/10ths of 1%.
Cry me a river, "Why should the airlines have to lose money so that SpaceX can make money?".
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Why should the airline have to lose money so that SpaceX can make money?
This is where some government capitalism should set the right incentives.
There should be a tax put on airspace. It could be based on volume, area, and time.
And then we'll pay this tax in addition to what we pay now. It's our limited space these folks are using and we'll be the ones to pay for it. How on earth is this fair?
Re:Technology advances and the world changes (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the airlines probably deserve to have more notice about these launches, so that they can plan appropriately and avoid delays.
Adding 62 miles to their flightpath is definitely something they need to suck up, the world cannot be held hostage for this.
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You're talking a couple hundred pounds of fuel per plane, they only have so much capacity as it is and they tend to only carry as much fuel as they need to get to their destination. I guess you expect the public to subsidize Musk's launches through higher plane ticket prices then?
How about Musk and his fellow space cadets pay for the airlines extra expenses whenever they're doing a launch. Or limit how many "spaceports" we really need. How about both?
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You're talking a couple hundred pounds of fuel per plane, they only have so much capacity as it is and they tend to only carry as much fuel as they need to get to their destination.
So if there's severe weather or some other problem that prevents a plane from landing immediately when it reaches its destination, they just let the plane crash? That doesn't sound like a very good plan.
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They can't dip into the emergency reserve just to detour around a rocket because then if there was an emergency they wouldn't have a full reserve to deal with it.
Re:Technology advances and the world changes (Score:5, Insightful)
The "extra" expenses come from having to share a mutually-exclusive resource to which everyone has an equally valid moral claim.
What you're essentially arguing is that because airlines used to be the only people using the airspace and got by with some particular expenses, then that gives them the right to demand the same level of service (or money to compensate) in perpetuity.
What's more, this is true even when airlines compete with other airlines. When Southwest adds a flight from ORD to SFO, the other airlines incur some additional costs due to scheduling. This might mean sitting on the tarmac at O'Hare for a few more minutes or having to slow their approach to slot in on approach. By your logic, they owe United the money for this "extra" expense.
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equally valid moral claim
I consider claims of the kind of "I need to go through it because I want to get on the other side" kind of more valid than "I want to go through it because it is faster and more comfortable". You can get from A to B on earth's surface just fine without using airspace at all. Try to leave the earth's surface without using a little airspace and things get quite difficult.
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The general public subsidizes taxi rides when it has to detour due to construction, they have to subsidize it when a subway or bus line is out for any reason, that's the way of the world. We already subsidize airlines when they fly around other forms of restricted airspace, including (as is the subject of numerous court cases) because darth cheeto happens to be golfing that day.
But, strictly speaking, if airlines are given adequate notice about launch blackouts and they plan properly, it really is their pro
Re:Technology advances and the world changes (Score:5, Interesting)
The airlines need to adjust and adapt, just like everyone else.
Actually, I think the point they are making is that those controlling the airspace need to adjust and adapt. Rockets do not take long to pass through controlled airspace and they pass through it vertically so they should not need a huge area around them to be closed for extended periods of time. It's fine to take insanely large safety margins when you have very few launches but clearly now they need to actually evaluate the risks better and come up with a more efficient way to operate safely.
Re:Technology advances and the world changes (Score:4, Informative)
Rockets do not take long to pass through controlled airspace and they pass through it vertically so they should not need a huge area around them to be closed for extended periods of time
I suppose they are allowing for the possibility or likelihood of the rocket blowing up, Challenger style, and sending a spinning Tesla a long way in a random direction.
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The airspace doesn't just get shut down while the rocket is physically passing through it. It gets shut down for the whole launch window, as well as some time leading up to the launch.
That said, the controlled airspace isn't all that large, and most of it only applies to low altitudes, so it's not really a big deal anyhow. It's generally something like a circle with a radius of 30-40 nautical miles, from the ground up to 18,000 feet. The launch schedules are known far in advance, the actual restrictions are
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and they pass through it vertically
errrrr no they most definitely do not just pass through the atmosphere it vertically.
I do agree there's probably an incredible fat in the safety margins which can be cut down. There usually is. But it's not like a rocket only affects column of a few hundred meters and that's that.
Re:Technology advances and the world changes (Score:4, Informative)
Rockets certainly do get going horizontally, but usually not until they're beyond the bulk of the Earth's atmosphere - air is a problem for them. Meanwhile commercial airliners rarely climb above 10-12km.
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errrrr no they most definitely do not just pass through the atmosphere it vertically.
Actually, they do because the most important thing initially is to get out of the atmosphere. They only start to gain a large horizontal component once they are high enough that air resistance is much less at which point they will be well above the level of any aircraft which rely on air for lift.
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Rocket launches are given priority and the airspace closed because they're rare events. The one-time closure imposes only a small economic hardship onto other industries for the year overall. But if rocket launches become commonplace, then the logic behind givi
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Why do rockets get priority over airliners so the airliners have to reroute around rocket launches?
Cause rich asshole, of course.
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Why do rockets get priority over airliners so the airliners have to reroute around rocket launches?
Cause rich asshole, of course.
It's the same as boating rules. The more maneuverable vessel gives the right away to the less maneuverable vessel.
Spacecraft during a launch have much tighter windows to make a specific orbit, have much tighter environmental requirements (i.e. a relatively calm day), have a limited amount of fuel (in comparison to an airplane), and, by their nature, cannot avoid other objects. All of these add up to good reasons why airlines have to give way and re-route.
Also, space launches are seen as much more importan
Re:Technology advances and the world changes (Score:5, Informative)
Many rocket launches have strict launch requirements. To efficiently reach the ISS, the launch window for the rocket is instantaneous. If it launches late, it's going to wind up in the wrong orbit, and take much longer to reach the ISS. It's a similar story for many other launches, such as those that are launching into sun synchronous orbits.
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Orbital mechanics often (but not always) dictate launch windows down to the second. A 7 minute delay for impacted flights (which are only low-altitude flights to begin with) is hardly an economic hardship.
There were probably not 563 commercial aviation flights impacted by the rather small restricted airspace (30-40 mile radius below 18k feet). That probably includes all general aviation... if not mostly general aviation, because I can't think of any commercial airliner, jet or turboprop, that has a cruise a
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A seven minute delay to a flight is like being on time to begin with, so it really really matters not one jot.
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Turn the question around - why should airlines get priority? They are after all businesses out to make a quick buck. They have no more claim to the airspace than rocket companies do, and yet have routinely been granted quite generous access, even when it causes problems for people on the ground.
Give them equal access? Sure - let's talk about that in 20-50 years when the demands of rocket launches on airspace amount to more than a fraction of a percent of those made by airlines.
Besides which, current rock
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And since when has any billionaire given a flying fuck about how many of us filthy commoners get shit on by their self-indulgent hobbies?
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So, if your daily commute normally takes you by this one intersection, and suddenly the government comes along and tells you that you have to take a route that's now 45 minutes longer, I guess you should just adjust and adapt. And, oh yeah, you can't move closer. So, you can just suck up that extra commute expense because we're doing something for Elon, er, umm, the greater good.
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FAA needs to adapt and adjust. The launch + landing take a couple minutes and not a chance to take longer. If the launch is delayed, it's delayed by days, not minutes or hours. This means the restrictions shouldn't affect more than a couple airplanes that would be in the immediate vicinity of the launchpad and downrange, for duration of the rocket flight; some of them could even just throttle down and add extra 15 minutes of delay without changing the route.
Restrictions due to rocket launches have ridiculou
Re:Technology advances and the world changes (Score:5, Insightful)
Except... airlines are useful. Private expeditions to Mars are not.
Your leisure or business flight does nothing to advance humanity. Space research, on the other hand...
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Your leisure or business flight does nothing to advance humanity. Space research, on the other hand...
Yeah, physicists, doctors, mathematicians.. those science types never fly around to conferences to speak about their humanity progressing ideas or anything..
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You don't need to advance humanity... that's an insane goalpost shift by the responder. Well, space flight has to. But all airplanes have to do is make life better on earth. Businessmen who meet to create products are useful. Scientists are useful. Heck, even vacations are useful. Just looking at the fuel, you can get 14 tons of whatever to Mars, or 80,000 people to and from a vacation on another continent (trans-Atlantic flights).
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Right. They fly to climate change conferences to complain about excessive CO2 emissions.
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The car was a dummy load on a rocket they half expected to explode. Normally such things are tested with blocks of concrete or other inert mass, because no-one will insure sending up anything valuable on an experimental flight.
Come on.... (Score:1)
"Musk topped himself by nailing a simultaneous landing of the Falcon Heavy's boosters."
I guess he was riding on top of them guiding them into place right? It was Musk's engineers not Musk.
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In the UK if you say "Fred topped himself", you mean Fred committed suicide.
Rabble Rabble! (Score:1)
God damn horseless carriages ruining everything...
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God damn horseless carriages ruining everything...
Except I'm pretty sure none of us commoners are every going to get to ride on a SpaceX rocket. It's not like Musk is ever going to produce a Model T spaceship for the rest of us. He's just a rich prick indulging a hobby that will, at best, let NASA continue to pretend they aren't just wasting taxpayer money on a useless space station for a little longer.
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Horses have exhaust, too.
https://www.historic-uk.com/Hi... [historic-uk.com]
SpaceX nonstop to Tokyo (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry horse buggy whip makers of the world your time is over.
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Sorry horse buggy whip makers of the world your time is over.
Huh? You think a rocket engine is going to be even remotely competitive with airline travel even if they cut the time taken down by a factor of 10? Musk may do a lot of things, but he won't displace the airline industry in the slightest.
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Yes. You are forgetting, as everyone else that keeps going on and on about the price of what a ticket would cost, a ballistic flight would not be orbital. No reason to go up 500-700 miles and hit 17,000mph. It would be more on par with an ICBM which is less than 250 miles up and half that speed. With reusability and the much cheaper to burn methane fuel
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No I'm not forgetting a thing. I am just acutely aware of the cost of burning rocket fuel to propel something. Whether you're shooting into space or launching horizontally what you've achieved is orders of magnitude less efficient than a jet engine, which also wouldn't be cost effective compared to turbofans.
the tickets should be more on par with luxury 1st class accommodations
So even assuming you're correct, what you're saying is that the tickets should be on par with a class of flight that airlines fail to fill and in many cases are actively eliminating from their services
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Who mods this shit up? At best only a handful of people would pay millions to fly to Tokyo by space rocket. Why would the airlines care about that?
Musk fanboys who think they'll be taken up to Musk's personal meritocracy based Martian society. 99.9999% are likely to be replaced by AI before that could ever happen though.
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I look forward to them crying when SpaceX starts trying to fly their rockets as commercial airliners and start stealing their lucrative overseas routes.
Sorry horse buggy whip makers of the world your time is over.
Who mods this shit up? At best only a handful of people would pay millions to fly to Tokyo by space rocket. Why would the airlines care about that?
Blue Origin, for their "Pretend to be an Astronaut" ballistic flights, charges ... what, $250K? Less than "millions".
The current vehicles are totally unsuited for regular air travel, but I could certainly imagine a "ballistic" transport that would take you anywhere on Earth in less than 90 minutes*. Having recently spent 20 air hours, each way, flying to Bangalore and back, getting rid of over 18 hours of center-seat torment would be worth ... quite a bit. Not $250K of course, but about what the late Co
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The current vehicles are totally unsuited for regular air travel, but I could certainly imagine a "ballistic" transport that would take you anywhere on Earth in less than 90 minutes*.
* (Of course, you still have two hours of getting through check-in security at the airport, and an hour getting through customs...)
Also rockets inevitably make sonic booms where they take off and land as they need to clear the atmosphere, they can't fly subsonic until they clear populated areas like the Concorde did. For the F9/FH the boom is 5.3/7.4 miles in radius @ 100 dBA which probably means restrictions on housing for >10 miles around a rocket base, probably 25 miles or more from the city center. So you can add travel time for that back and forth too. The bigger practical issue though is where you'd find that big a deserted ar
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Not necessarily - I seem to recall several people running numbers for the BFR, and coming out with passenger-mile carbon emissions as low as 1/3rd that of commercial airliners for a flight halfway around the world - that total lack of friction can make a big difference on long flights.
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>Rockets currently only fly in perfect weather
Fixed that for you.
Rockets launch in perfect weather because they're very expensive, relatively untested under rough conditions, and have very few demands for promptness. A launch window to a particular orbital interception can be very narrow, minutes or even seconds, but it generally doesn't matter if the launch happens today or next Tuesday, so why take the added risk of launching in bad weather - it's a risk with no reward, and thus a guaranteed amortized
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People get killed all the time, life is a 100% fatal condition. I bet you drive, or at least ride in cars, and that's far more dangerous than, say, taking an airplane ride in rough conditions.
Besides, killing people is generally quite expensive, especially the sort of people that can afford first-class ticket prices. Not to mention SpaceX is projecting that the ship itself will cost $200M, with another $230M for the booster - which the SpaceX animations all show being used for suborbital flights. So there
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Do they really though? How much have the deaths really cost them?
Being taken care of (Score:5, Interesting)
Eric Ralph at Teslarati has an article up right now:
"SpaceX urges Congress to expedite commercial spaceflight regulation reforms"
https://www.teslarati.com/spac... [teslarati.com]
"Related to the focus of this particular hearing, namely regulatory reform, Representative Rick Larsen (WA-2) appeared to speak for everyone when he mirrored the four panelists’ sense of urgency for beginning the process of reforming federal space launch regulations by asking for an informal meeting outside the doors of the chamber once the session concluded, stating that “it’s that urgent.” In order for companies like SpaceX (and eventually Blue Origin) to be able to sustainably and reliably reach cadences of one launch per week in the near future, the currently cumbersome and dated launch licensing apparatus will almost invariably require significant reforms."
Blue Origin, SpaceX, the United Launch Alliance and the the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) are on it. Expect some rapid change, mostly in approval time for flights (right now: 200 days!) and a reduction in the huge time periods (90 minutes pre- and post- activity) of the no-fly restrictions around launches and landings.
Move it; Launches from FL are just "OK" anyway (Score:2)
Launches from the top of a Hawaiian island would be closer to the equator and higher up in the sky to start with.
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Yeah, and every few years, you don't even need propellant to start the rocket up, earth itself will give it a nice shove upwards.
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Launches from the top of a Hawaiian island would be closer to the equator and higher up in the sky to start with.
How about launching from the top of Kilimanjaro or Everest? Replicate the Cape Canaveral infrastructure on a couple different mountain tops to provide redundancy. Make a Tr*mp International Hotel part of the package and you've got a winner.
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Yeah, and it's way cheaper to get the stuff you are launching into space and the rockets and fuel over to Hawaii first!
If you meant to be sarcastic you are incorrect; fuel for an ocean ship to go to Hawaii and a truck to grind up a mountain road are a rounding error to the fuel needed to fly straight up 2 miles.
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2 miles of alttiude is rounding error. Spaceflight isn't about altitude, it's about velocity. Launching from a higher elevation doesn't gain you anything significant, it's rounding error compared to the diameter of the earth. It's much safer to launch from a coastline, where if something goes wrong, you're just dropping it in the ocean.
Watkins Colorado? (Score:2)
That is right on the approach to Denver International...
Think prior use applies there..
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes well BOOHOO (Score:4)
Airspace has been defined as a public good. Many of us can't fully enjoy the use of our property because of air space considerations and have to put up will all kinds of noise pollution from over flights. To frigging bad if the airlines suffer because someone else wants to enjoy the use of the public good.
Frankly the World would be much much better off without the airline industry. The risk of invasive species and pathogens spreading would be greatly reduced. A significant amount of pollution would be cut.
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Frankly the World would be much much better off without the airline industry. The risk of invasive species and pathogens spreading would be greatly reduced. A significant amount of pollution would be cut.
Total agreement. The Airline industry releases huge amounts of carbon into the upper atmosphere. Time to reorganize our thinking about them. In the United States we should get with the program and do high speed rail like the rest of the world.
90% population reduction (Score:2)
Japan 336 people per square kilometer
United Kingdom 266
Netherlands 411
Germany 226
United States 33
Rail works okay when you live and work within 2km of the station. Compared to many countries, the US has 90% less people close to the station. What makes sense in one scenario doesn't make sense with the population density an order of magnitude lower.
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Frankly the World would be much much better off without the airline industry ...snipsnip ...
Total agreement. The Airline industry releases huge amounts ...snipsnip... In the United States we should get with the program and do high speed rail like the rest of the world.
Still pollutes. The construction of the rail system, it's support infrastructure and the required "last mile" or "last hundred miles" shipping all contribute to carbonnara loading and globular climate change. IMHO wagon trains piloted by well trained monkeys driving teams of high-speed yaks is the way to go. I plan on signing an Executive Order making it so. ALL KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!
Dam spell correction. I was trying to say "Yea. Like totally".
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Frankly the World would be much much better off without the airline industry. The risk of invasive species and pathogens spreading would be greatly reduced. A significant amount of pollution would be cut.
Bwuahahahahahah! Oh wait, you're serious? I didn't realize, it was hard to tell with you gargling Musk's genitials.
One, more invasive species and pathogens move around via ships than ever on planes simply by the factor of cargo carried.
Two, weekly or daily rocket launches like the billionaire-o-nauts want will be just fiiiiine for the atmosphere.. right? They'd have no environmental impacts whatsoever! LMFAO
Three, actual science people who do life saving and progressing humanity work fly commercial pla
I see (Score:2)
So lots of retirees were late for Bingo.
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So lots of retirees were late for Bingo.
+1
Dumbest thing I've read all week. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever Musk or one of his rivals sends up a spacecraft, the carriers which operate closer to the ground must avoid large swaths of territory and incur sizable expenses.
They're not launching things willy-nilly for funzies - ding-dongs; they're doing it because they're providing a service for paying customers (commercial and governmental) and preparing for future services. It's not the "billionaire space race" it's commerce and the free market. If it wasn't SpaceX or Blue Origin, etc... it would be the Air Force or NASA directly. Air carriers would have to delay and/or re-direct their traffic regardless. Jesus, get some critical thinking skills.
You know it's bad because "billionaires" (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh... seriously, the headline is clearly written by somebody who either hates space travel, or somebody who just hates that billionaires are involved in it.
Grow up.
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When I saw the link was to bloomberg I moved on. Either they're on an anti-Musk tirade or they don't remember shuttles launches.
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Or someone who knew that with a provocative headline, he could attract clicks from both the readers thinking "Yeah! Screw the billionaires!" and the readers thinking "Who is this moron who thinks airlines have exclusive right to airspace?"
Restricted Airspace (Score:2)
You don't hear about airlines complaining about restrictions flying over military bases or other "top secret" places.
Put a permanent flight path block over the area and be done with it. "Our fuel costs jump an extra hundred dollars because we had to fly around a flight restriction which incurred a 10 cent increase on a ticket price."
Womp womp, get over yourselves.
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The airspace closures vary in location and shape depending on the intended destination orbit. The closures are noticeably different between an ISS launch and a GTO launch, never mind other orbits.
The bigger issue is the impact the launches have on maritime trade. The launches out of Florida have closure areas over some pretty significant shipping lanes.
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It must be conceded that military bases and other "top secret" places don't change from hour to hour.
That said, it's an idiotic thing to complain about. Not like it's new or anything. We've been dealing with this sort of thing (rocket launches) since before most of us were born...
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Delays? (Score:4, Insightful)
Space launches for satellites to route planes (Score:3)
We just had a story where airlines could save "big. big, money, huge money" using satellite comms to reroute planes. How the fuck are they supposed to get the satellites up there if they can't launch them on rockets?
Once that sat net is up, airlines will just route around the rocket plume like a road closure.
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Airlines haven't discovered the hypotenuse yet, so they reroute via a series of right angles. Very expensive.
Pay as you go (Score:2)
...for airspace.
They should pay for the airspace they use. That is, the rocket companies as well as the airline companies. If you use a lot of air space and cause inconveniences for others in the space, you pay a lot. If you use a little, you pay less. People who buy airplane tickets shouldn't have to subsidize commercial space companies (nor the other way around, but that doesn't seem like an issue at the moment). No special favors for anyone -- not even Musk.
Musk has Topped Himself !? (Score:2)
fans cheered as Musk topped himself
Musk topped himself? End of his problems then.
Oh, I see from Wikipedia that it has a different meaning in US slang from UK slang.
Let's blame "billionaires" - like Bloomberg (Score:3)
Damn those evil soulless billionaires! If only it were NASA doing the launches, things would've been completely different...
Those are FAA requirements, from the same people, who only a few years ago claimed [travelandleisure.com] (and compelled the airlines to claim), your cellphone could bring down your airliner...
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The FCC bans use of cellphones on aircraft, not the FAA. [archive.org] The Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on the topic links out to a few other good sources.
This.
The big problem was from pilots in the early days, headphones have to be incredibly clear, which makes them very sensitive to EM interference. Basically as soon as you were airborne phones would start screaming for a tower (which transmit down, not up) and this translated into that annoying electronic beep/buzz that you used to get with your TV when your 90's Nokia went off.
Also they interfered with navigation system (pretty sure the announcements used to say "please switch of your mobile phone a
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They both do [petergreenberg.com] — for different reasons. Now you know...
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And further down it says: "If this happens, the FAA is apparently going to let individual airlines make their own decisions as to whether or not to allow the cell calls."
Just as I said, both FAA and FCC ban it. Just as I said, FAA is (or was a year ago) forcing individual airlines to claim, the phones "interfere" with the plane.
More here [monroeaerospace.com] and, quite officially, here [transportation.gov]...
This was all so easy for you to find yourself, I strongly suspecting, you aren't arguing in good faith...
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The first source you linked does state that the FAA had a "long-standing ban" on cellphones, but it cites no source for that claim. I've never heard of Monroe Aerospace so I'm not inclined to take them at their word, especially when it contradicts a more reputable source - the other one that you linked to. Quote from that source -
What I do want to emphasize is that the FAA is not changing its rules....If an air carrier elects to permit cell phone usage (or other PED) onboard during flight, they must determine that the use of that particular model phone won’t interfere with the navigation or communication systems onboard the specific type of aircraft on which the phone will be used.
The Wikipedia article I linked calls out something similar and includes a source in its second sentence
I'm not arguing with you in bad faith. I think we're getting caught up on a
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This means, FAA will continue to ban cellular phones — because, given the variety of devices, it is impossible to certify each model as non-interfering.
Either way, FAA's ban exists, just as I said. And, according to the FAA official [transportation.gov], it is not going away...
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Apple has sold 14 [wikipedia.org] models of iPhone, ever. Southwest currently operates 3 [wikipedia.org] varieties of 737. Is it so inconceivable that Apple and Southwest team up, as a marketing gimmick, to get those 42 combinations approved and then advertise that you can now use any iPhone on any Southwest flight to call your ride before you land? (actually, now that I've written it, I think it is inconceivable, but not for any reason to do with the FAA: who wants to deal with other passengers talking loudly on the phone in-flight?). T
Sour grapes of the short sellers? (Score:2)
Elon has been taunting and teasing them, "Tsunami of hurt coming their way ..." "In three weeks their posit
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The only Wall Street types who have name recognition are all from the late 19th and early 20th century, for example Rockefeller or Vanderbilt. Not one name
airlines do NOT own the air (Score:2)
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Re:But satellites are showing planes faster routes (Score:4, Interesting)
Airlines love to blame their efficiency problems on everyone else. Gee, I thought space programs were were supposed to be an insignificant part of the economy. I suppose they were, back in the days when we had to sit around waiting out NASA's endless delays (see adjacent article on the JWST project). So now that private enterprise is upgrading the game, we are to believe that their launches are suddenly an obstacle to the friendly skies of commercial aviation?
Airframe manufacturers have a new generation of large, high efficiency aircraft on offer. So long as airlines would rather cram us into puddle-jumpers on major routes instead of buying the new planes, those crowded skies are their own fault.
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The spoke and hub system is the biggest contributor to airline schedule inflexibility. If I had a dollar for every time I've had a flight from the southern U.S to the west coast delayed because O'Hara, to which I wasn't even going, has some kind of weather related flight delay I could take the sub-orbital transport when it gets here.
Between the airlines and the TSA flying now sucks so much that unless I'm flying to the other coast or internationally I simply refuse to do it any more. I take mileage or a ren