Cell Phones To Be Allowed On UK Planes

Matty the Monkey writes "The British regulator in charge of air travel has approved cellphones for use on airline flights, reports the BBC. Airlines will be allowed to activate base stations in the plane's tail after takeoff, creating a zone of mobile coverage around the plane. 'The services could stop working once aircraft leave European airspace. Initially, only second generation networks will be offered but growing interest would mean that third generation, or 3G, services would follow later, said Ofcom. The cost of making a mobile phone call from a plane will be higher than making one from the ground.'"

Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[BWJones]

I once had the displeasure of sitting on a plane on the tarmac for two hours while our flight was delayed and the pilot allowed everyone to use their cell phones. It was torture as most folks were not talking on their cell phones to arrange transportation or take care of business, but they were talking (loudly) about everything and nothing and forcing those around them to have to listen! Even worse, people began trying to speak over one another and the volume gradually increased until there was an amazing din of people calling their friends to say "Hey! Hey! Betcha can't guess where I'm calling you from! An airplane! Ha ha ha ha, yeah and on my own cell phone even!". It was a horrible forced invasion of personal space and having to listen to someone blabber on and on "Like I know she does not like me because, like, she totally gave me a bitchy look yesterday and I was so like, peeved you know? because like, I think she is just so.... like not on top of it...... blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

I am waiting for the smashed phones and fist fights to start happening in response to this.

Re:More expensive? Why?

[Naughty Bob]

>What if I use my cell phone and the plane is still on the ground?

from the summary....

>Airlines will be allowed to activate base stations in the plane's tail after takeoff...

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[Ethanol-fueled]

The passengers don't deserve to be fist-fought nearly as much as the assholes who approved the policy.

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[Otter]

I wouldn't mind it in the slightest if it were limited to non-voice uses. What's to object to? But conversations would be justification for homicide.

It's more expensive because ...

[Tim Ward]

(1) The extra base station costs money, and someone has to pay for it, after all I want to get paid for the work I've done on it don't I!

(2) The satellite bandwidth costs money.

(3) The extra infrastructure on the ground costs money.

And, last time I heard, the ground in most places is lower than 3,000m so if you use your phone on the ground what happens is that you'll be just as liable to prosecution as you are today.

Look mate, when there's a phone switched on in my plane I can hear it over the VHF radio - how do I know it's not also affecting the NAV radio (adjacent band) and making the VOR needle point the wrong way? - you can't hear that.

Security Double Standard

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the paranoia at airports, you can't even get on a plane with a 120g tube of toothpaste. But somehow cellular phones are ok, even though we can supposedly crash the plane if we turn it on at the wrong time? Basically if there is a buck to be made, the authorities and airlines are surprisingly flexible.

Mobile phone jammers

[sakdoctor]

Sooner or later someone will mention phone jammers, and a few posts later someone will counter with the fact that it might block a doctors phone.

This is the Godwin of mobile phone topics. Ok wait for it...

Re:Earplugs... £0.15 a pair.

[Belial6]

Finally! Someone that doesn't want to hear other people talk, yet is smart enough to buy earplugs. For some reason it seems that the less a person likes to hear other people use cell phones the lower their intelligence goes. It is good to see that this is not a universal truth. There might actually be hope for other people that like it to be silent in public places.

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[owlnation]

Would you mind as much if this was only used for text messages and data plans for in-flight communications using a laptop? What if phones were forced into vibrate mode when they detected the picocell on the plane?

The vibration mode thing seems like an essential thing (in ALL public places actually). The sound made by incoming texts is just as annoying as some retard talking on the plane into their phone. It's Pavlovian. The sound of incoming message alert is designed to attract the attention of the recipient -- unfortunately this also means everyone else within 40 feet.

As an aside, I'm sure there must be a way of mathematically proving that the altitude of a phone call is inversely proportional to importance of the call.

In Other News...

[CheshireCatCO]

... the number of mid-air fatal beatings of fellow passengers with in-flight meals is about to rise 5000%.

Attention all passengers

[Anonymous Coward]

Please switch off your portable audio tape players as radiation from the headphone cables may interfere with the flight.

For entertainment, you may instead dial through the wireless GSM base station we have stuck to the back of the aircraft.

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Right when I saw the summary I predicted this comment.

Someone talking on the phone next to me is no worse than them watching hentai on their Neno with the volume turned up to deaf-before-50 level.

Yes, that has happened to me.

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[qmaqdk]

The vibration mode thing seems like an essential thing (in ALL public places actually). The sound made by incoming texts is just as annoying as some retard talking on the plane into their phone. It's Pavlovian. The sound of incoming message alert is designed to attract the attention of the recipient -- unfortunately this also means everyone else within 40 feet.

Agreed. I wish there was a way to force this on people, but as far as I know there isn't.

As an aside, I'm sure there must be a way of mathematically proving that the altitude of a phone call is inversely proportional to importance of the call.

This on the other hand can be fixed. With pricing. Having the cell on the plane essentially means that people are roaming on the planes net, just as if you were in another country, and therefore you could attach a price to different usages. Voice could be made more expensive (i.e. meant for business use only), and data could be priced lower. I people really wanted to chit-chat they could use IM on their laptop instead.

Crying Wolf?

[crispi]

Hang on - I thought phones and all electronic devices on planes were dangerous.
Or wait - perhaps we were being lied to all along? They're not dangerous, but in fact
perfectly safe.

Perhaps the biggest danger is people blocking isles not moving their legs when they are moving their lips. (no jokes please).

C.

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[sasdrtx]

I am far more fed up with the whining about cell phones here on /. than I'll ever be with actual people babbling on the phone.

People like to talk. Get over it.

Re:Mobile phone jammers

[ricebowl]

Sooner or later someone will mention phone jammers, and a few posts later someone will counter with the fact that it might block a doctors phone.

On an aeroplane? Why would a doctor, needing to receive calls, be on an aeroplane? If the doctor's likely to get calls regarding medical emergencies (I assume that's why you specified that profession) while he, or she, is on an aeroplane that's about to take off, or already in flight, I strongly suspect they wouldn't answer anyway.

Re:Earplugs... £0.15 a pair.

[Al Dimond]

I'm self-centered because I'd like people to follow basic rules of public courtesy that have been customary since the beginning of time? No. I don't ask that people not talk on cell phones, just that they talk in the six-inch voices necessary for their phones to pick up the sound of their voices. Doing so doesn't affect in any way the ability of the speaker to have a conversation.

This isn't about unexpected sounds on airplanes (that was probably not well worded, sorry). This is about public spaces in general, and about any sounds that could be useful to hear. It could be on a plane or on a train trying to have a conversation of my own at reasonable volume. Face-to-face, cell, walkie-talkie, whatever. I actually don't fly much, but I ride the L (Chicago subway/elevated trains) pretty often; if I had earplugs in on the L I might miss a change-of-service announcement (sometimes when trains get bunched they'll have the lead train skip stops). And I'd certainly be less aware of people around me trying to board and depart crowded trains. Fortunately not very many people talk loudly on the L, and not many people wear earplugs, because a train full of people that couldn't hear anything would really suck.

I think it's great that someone is finally putting to rest the idea that cell phones will harm plane navigation systems, and is even working out a solution to make in-flight calls work. Go progress! Now why can't people progress (or even just not regress) in their ability to behave conscientiously? You know, take regard for the people around them? You calling me self-centered is fucking laughable.

Re:But do you know why cell phones are not allowed

[Keebler71]

The real reason why cell phones are banned on planes has nothing to do with their interference with a planes navigation system.

And you base this statement on what exactly? I'm a test pilot and I am sick of hearing these erroneous arguments every time this subject comes up. Every time we put a new piece of gear in a plane, we have to go through about 3-4 weeks of EMI testing to verify that the new addition doesn't interfere with the electronics of the aircraft. Guess what... the guys in the E3 lab always find some detectable change. The chance of that device causing a fatal mishap is low... but what happens when you multiply that by hundreds or thousands? These devices are *not* tested in aircraft - it would be prohibitively expensive to test every mp3 player, cell phone and wireless modem with every aircraft configuration. Have you ever been on a telecon with someone that has a blackberry too close to a mic? Do you really want that interference stepping on a pilot's voice comm with ATC and establishing an incorrect altitude or having missing a TCAS call?

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[belg4mit]

*Some* people like to talk, *some* people like to be heard, and *some* people like to listen.
These people should recognize that not everyone fits into all of these categories. Nor do they
apply all of the time. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch/ [theatlantic.com]

There are plenty of public spaces where there is a reasonable expectation of little noise
(libraries, movie theaters, plays, public meetings, most kinds of stores) and this expectation
has always been implicit for airplanes (the alternative was not an option). It's not unreasonable
to expect that the status quo to persist, particularly when one is thrown in with a random mix
of strangers for an extended period of time. Talk all you fucking want on a 40 minute commuter
shuttle (though I feel sorry for your inability to be with yourself that long), but by gum you
better respect the varying activities of others (and the incumbent conditions) on a 6 hour flight.

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[porpnorber]

I've never been able to understand why this feature is missing. It's so obviously necessary to be able to declare silent zones, emergency call only zones, and so on, and phones have radio transceivers. I mean, what, the designers of these devices don't know about churches, theatres, funeral homes, schools and business meetings? Bah.

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[FearForWings]

Some people do not realize that just because they have a hard time hearing someone on their cellphone does not mean the other person can't hear them so they must yell.

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[WaltFrench]

Maybe I didn't set my threshold low enough?

But after scanning ALL the posts, I didn't see a single one, which said, "oh, if this is a PITA, I'll just explain to my neighbor that (s)he is being obnoxious; please don't invade my space." Nor one, which said, "I'll just ask the attendant to manage the situation, optionally threatening to write the airline explaining that they are forfeiting my patronage, naming the specific crew who caused the difficulty.

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