Cell Phones On Airliners
I’ve never met or talked to a person who advocated people being able to use a cellular phone on an airplane. When the subject comes up, you always read or hear how awful it would be to have someone conducting a call next to you in a seat and how intolerable that would be.
Personally, I think most people would use them and most would even accept them on airplanes. Just as they already do with people at Starbucks, restaurants and buses. The relatively non-controversial acceptance of them onboard in Europe is simply some confirmation of my suspicions.
I don’t want them on the airplane myself. But, then, I’m also somebody who can refrain from using one at a restaurant table too. It seems to me that the best reason to continue to ban them from US airliners is simply to reduce opportunities for conflict onboard flights. I invite your comments.
Makes sense to me, keeping the peace… OTOH I might be in favor of having the ability to send & receive SMS text messages while in flight. Sometimes you *have* to be reachable…
But on the other-other hand, the airlines themselves have proven that in-flight telephony does not pose a risk to navionics and flight systems – they still have their own cellphones on board some flights, don’t they. I think the ban is motivated by money and not flight safety or security – the airline doesn’t get its greedy little fingers any further into your wallet if you’re using *your* phone & calling plan, and not theirs…
-R
The telephones in airliner cockpits are flight certified and use a different set of waveforms from the “normal” cellphone.
Personally, I think we can all agree that no one was harmed by being out of communication while on an airplane and since the airplane is already a crowded and hostile place, we would be better off without one more irritant being added. Greg
The telephones in airliner cockpits are flight certified and use a different set of waveforms from the “normal” cellphone.
There’s no reason that modern cellphones cannot be built that also use this “different” technology and be certified “flight-friendly.”
-R
You don’t *want* that technology. It’s a low frequency that is incapable of performing many of the features that most people like in a modern cell phone.
However, I’ll also concede that modern cell phones don’t appear to affect aircraft anyway. As one captain pointed out, there are 50 active cell phones within 50 feet of a cockpit every time they are at a gate. It’s almost a dead certainty that someone has left their cell phone turned on during almost every flight in the last 10 years. If cell phones affected flight instrumentation, something would have happened by now.
I just don’t want cell phones used on airplanes. Greg
I just don’t want cell phones used on airplanes.
And I, on the other hand, would like to be able to send text.
-R