FAA To Reevaluate Inflight Electronic Device Use 336
coondoggie writes "If you have been on a commercial airline, the phrase 'The use of any portable electronic equipment while the aircraft is taxiing, during takeoff and climb, or during approach and landing,' is as ubiquitous but not quite as tedious as 'make sure your tray tables are in the secure locked upright position.' But the electronic equipment restrictions may change. The Federal Aviation Administration today said it was forming a government-industry group to study the current portable electronic device use policies commercial aviation use to determine when these devices can be used safely during flight."
Re:Are these devices that important? (Score:5, Informative)
Because the reason they are banned isn't because of electromagnetic emissions, but rather because it is a crowd control technique. There's nothing special about the first 10 and last 10 minutes of a flight, other than it's the most likely time for a plane to crash land. The regulation is all about causing passengers to pay attention to flight attendants and nothing to do with avionics.
Mythbusters? (Score:5, Informative)
Didn't Mythbusters cover this?
Yes. [kwc.org]
Re:Oh please no (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh please no (Score:3, Informative)
Re:$$$ Won't let this happen... (Score:4, Informative)
Funny my last international long haul flight completely independent of the FAA had the flight attendants tell us that not only were we allowed to turn on electronic devices but we were also allowed to turn off flight mode and make use of the in-plane WiFi for internet and to make phone calls from our mobiles.
Worse even the rates were reasonable, imagine that!
EM concerns are a throwback to the 90s where people didn't have a clue what's going on. Last I recall all the devices which have been blamed for aircraft instrumentation interference have been unable to reproduce the issue.
Re:Are these devices that important? (Score:5, Informative)
There's nothing special about the first 10 and last 10 minutes of a flight, other than it's the most likely time for a plane to crash land.
Actually, that's exactly what's special about those times.
Re:Considering I fly multiple times a month (Score:4, Informative)
It has been a while since I've been on a plane, but do cell phones make connections to towers during flight?
Of course. Why wouldn't they?
I've gotten off a flight and found messages on my phone that had arrived while I was at 30,000 feet somewhere over Idaho.
Unfortunately for cellphone users, the ban on cellphone use in flight is not an FAA ban, it is an FCC ban, and has nothing to do with passenger safety. It is entirely to do with the specific allocation of the frequencies in use as LAND MOBILE and not AIR MOBILE. The FAA won't be able to change that.
Re:Oh please no (Score:5, Informative)
This is why on aircraft that are licensed to allow cell phone use carry their own femtocell style access points. There aren't many airlines/aircraft that are licensed, but the trials have been in place for some time.
The main problem with cell phones on planes is a customer problem: the cost. They charge at international roaming rates, so it's not worth it unless you're making money off the call.
Re:$$$ Won't let this happen... (Score:5, Informative)
Your airplane contained a microcell and wifi base station. This reduces the transmitter power concerns because the mobile unit is able to reduce power because it's close to the base station. It also resolves the problem of a phone being present in many ground cells at once, since the mobile unit instead connects to the aircraft-based cell.
The most popular provider of inflight wifi in the US is Gogo, which uses a ground-based network of CDMA transmitters to link the aircraft's wifi base station with the Internet.
Re:This Isn't Going to Solve the General Problem (Score:5, Informative)
-Shades up so other planes can see you better while you are on the ground at night
I haven't heard this reason before, and if you think about it, dedicated freighters don't have passenger windows at all for light to escape through.
One explanation that I have heard is that having the shades open provides better situational awareness during the critical landing and takeoff phases of fight. Suppose the port side engine catches fire. With the shades open, people will see this and the flight attendants will know to direct passengers to evacuate using the starboard side exits only.
Re:Are these devices that important? (Score:4, Informative)
If you'd ever flown you'd know that they ask you to stow all personal effects - books, bags, coats. So it's clearly not EM emissions they're worried about.
http://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsid=6275 [faa.gov]
http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAdvisoryCircular.nsf/list/AC%2091.21-1A/$FILE/AC91-21-1A.pdf [faa.gov]
4. BACKGROUND. Section 91.21 (formerly 91.19) was initially established in May 1961 to prohibit the operation of portable frequency-modulated radio receivers aboard U.S. air carrier and U.S.-registered aircraft when the very high frequency omnidirectional range was being used for navigation purposes. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) subsequently determined that other PED’s could be potentially hazardous to aircraft communication and navigation equipment, if operated aboard aircraft. Amendment 91-35 amended the scope of former section 91.19 to prohibit the use of additional PED’s aboard certain U.S. civil aircraft. Earlier studies conducted by RTCA, Inc. (RTCA), Special Committee 156, Document No. RTCA/DO-199, Volumes 1 and 2, entitled “Potential Interference to Aircraft Electronic Equipment from Devices Carried Aboard,” have contributed greatly to an understanding of the operational effects of PED’s aboard aircraft. (See paragraph 7b for obtaining copies.)
Which by a process of elimination leaves a) attention and b) clutter. And c), both.
I think you missed one:
d) because someone told them their job depends on them repeating that magic phrase.
I don't fly nearly as frequently as I used to, but I've [also] never been asked to put away a book I've been reading.
The "pay attention" notion seems reasonable - which is why it probably is not true. Instead the truth seems to be that they are enforcing a rule from the 60's that probably doesn't make much sense [any more].
Common sense and federal regulations, eh?
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Informative)
Cell phone do not interfere with airplane equipment. Totally different frequency bands. Cell phones are used on planes (surreptitiously) every day. Occasionally and angry stewardess, but no other ill effects.
Cell phones are not allowed on planes at the behest of the FCC, because the cell systems we use today were never designed for hand off calls over vast regions at the speed of a plane, and a phone at cruise altitude could light up a thousand towers. This prohibition was always an FCC issue, and never much of a concern for the FAA.
WIFI would be just as likely to interfere as would cellular radio.
Yet wifi on the planes is already available on many flights.
With wifi, you can do voip. Almost every Android phone has Voip (internet calling) built in.
As of this time, none of the airlines allowing WIFI let you use any Voice app. They claim bandwidth issues.
However voice does not take as much bandwidth as most people think.
I suspect there is still some security concerns with allowing voice communications that are the real hold up here, I doubt there are any real technological issues in providing the bandwidth. On the other hand they do allow text chat apps, as well as email.
Actually there is.... (Score:5, Informative)
If your phone can connect to a tower 32,000’ away including all the scattering that buildings cause then there's no reason why it couldn't just because the signal is travelling in a more perpendicular direction with no obstacles.
Cellular antennas are optimized to receive signals in a horizontal "circle" parallel to the ground, so reception above/below a tower is poor.
If you're in the air, you're not connecting to a tower 32,000' below you, you're connecting to a whole bunch of towers 32,000' feet below you and 20+ miles away. Cellular signals will actually go pretty far with clear LOS, although the phone has to up the signal strength quite a bit, which is why a phone with a cellular antenna left on in-flight will burn a ton of battery.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh please no (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the receiver will generate very low level signals that propagate out from the device as part of the Rx circuits. This is no big deal - unless your GPS is in your pocket, you're in the window seat, and the plane's GPS receiver is mounted between the plastic interior skin and the outer aluminum skin (what, you thought the plane's GPS RF section was in the cockpit?). Your GPS receiver will be putting out a tiny signal, but it may still swamp the signal being received from the satellites 12,000 miles (20000 km) away.
For example, there was a report to the NASA pilot safety program:
"In 2007, one pilot recounted an instance when the navigational equipment on his Boeing 737 had failed after takeoff. A flight attendant told a passenger to turn off a hand-held GPS device and the problem on the flight deck went away." (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/business/18devices.html). This is apocryphal, and even if true would likely be the result of a badly damaged or badly designed device that didn't meet FCC regulations - but if you're going to allow a million people to carry on any electronic device they might have, in whatever condition it might be in, you're going to run into these kinds of receive-only-devices-that-transmit-worrisome-amounts-of-unexpected_RF.
This (http://gpsinformation.net/airgps/gsm_intf1.pdf) discusses the likely interference caused by phones in an aircraft; the big worry isn't so much modern planes and electronics, as it is electronics and planes designed before 1984:
"From the above, by comparing the test results with the qualification levels given in Section 2, it
can be seen that interference levels produced by a portable telephone, used near the flight deck or
avionics equipment bay, will exceed demonstrated susceptibility levels for equipment qualified to
standards published prior to July 1984. Since equipment qualified to these standards are installed in older
aircraft, and can be installed (and is known to be installed) in newly built aircraft, current policy for
restricting the use of portable telephones on all aircraft will need to remain in force." Of course, this document is 12 years old now, discussing designs that were current 16 years previously.