“Eventually” translates as “if and when your airline decides to go along” since this relaxation is not mandatory.
This signifies something that has been known for a good while: PEDs do not pose a meaningful interference threat to aircraft systems. They are hedging their bet just a bit: there is a provision for a flight crew to order that devices be switched off “in rare instances of low-visibility” - which presumably means when making an approach in something close to the minimum visibility allowed.
Note that cellphones will still not be usable in flight, per FCC (not FAA) rules. The history of this is interesting. The rule dates to the early 1990s when old cellphones with multiple-watt transmit power could cause problems if they “hit” too many cell towers. This has apparently not been a technical issue for at least 10 years, and the FCC had proposed that the rule be rescinded. But the public outcry against this was intense, along the lines of “I don’t want to have to listen to some idiot next to me chattering inanely for most of a 5-hour flight!” So, despite a lack of any technical justification, the ban stays in place.
And it continues to apply to private aircraft. Apparently, the FCC did not consider making a separate rule for these. If the folks on a 747 don’t want it, you can’t do it in your Cessna 150.
And within days of the first commercial carrier deciding to allow such use, watch the complaint boards light up when passengers conveniently forget to turn on airplane mode during the flight, begin (first) receiving calls during a flight and (soon after) making calls during a flight. It won’t be long before there are altercations aboard aircraft, and a few spectators light up their e-cigarettes, sit back and enjoy the show.
Even if you could ban them from calling midflight using thier phones, they could still use the airplanes’ Wifi (if so equipped) to Skype and blather inanely. <sigh> I’m looking fwd to being regaled with tales of long lines, bad food and the consistancy of thier morning poop while crammed into cattle class for five hours…Maybe I’ll start taking the train instead.
Easy answer: charge 'em thru the nose for it. They’ll learn quick. Oh, you say what about people just wanting to use wifi? Well, more profit; if we can’t afford it then let’s relearn to be unnetworked for a few hours at a time.
Complicated answer: set up a dedicated inflight portal interface that blocks VOIP.
BTW The passengers do not have a “right” to do anything aboard the plane contrary to airline policy or crew instructions. The problem is airlines will let people become as noisy as they want as long as it distracts them from how much the flying experience otherwise stinks.
Me, I’m buying one of those jet-noise-proof headsets the ground crew uses.
Delta GoGo inflight Wi-Fi terms of service bans using VOiP and streaming media. So they don’t need to set up a block (although I think they do block the major streaming and VoiP sites somehow) . If you use any VoiP service they can tell you not to, as per your final comment on following crew instructions.
First of all, while old cell phones often did reach multiple towers (and new ones do too), the major problem that it caused was more often that they reached multiple systems simultaneously, and the handoff between these systems really wasn’t built to handle that. This wreaked all kinds of havoc on cell phone systems, resulting in crashed systems and dropped calls and all kinds of fun.
Since cell phone users are amazingly stubborn (it often seems like the best way to guarantee that someone will use a cell phone in a particular area is to stick a sign there saying no cell phones allowed here) the cell phone companies just had to cope. And so those problems were solved many years ago. That much of your statement is correct.
Airborne cell phones do still communicate to multiple towers though, and this ties up all kinds of unnecessary bandwidth. So while you think the FCC is just being silly, they are really trying to prevent airborne idiots from unnecessarily using up valuable bandwidth.
There is justification for it.
The FAA cites the FCC reasons, and also cites potential interference to airborne systems. Realistically, airborne systems are specifically designed to handle unwanted noise from cell phones, so the chances of a problem occurring are rather low. The only real world problems I personally have heard of are noise in the pilot’s headsets. That’s enough of a concern for me, though. I know pilots are good at their job and they can handle all kinds of problems, but they don’t need noise making communication with the tower more difficult while they are trying to land the plane.
From the same news release, I quote items 6 and 7.
Item 6, as it states, deals with heavier devices (laptops, I expect) and the very real concern regarding these items flying around the cabin or impeding exit if something goes wrong. But having observed my fellow air travellers over many years, I can’t help but think that there will–initially at least–be more than a few fusses as the airlines try to make it clear why an iPad is ok but an Airbook is not.
Item 7–well, I’ll believe it when I see it. Practically nobody pays attention now and that seems unlikely to change. I always listen just in case I happen to be on the flight that’s got the new and improved passenger survival system that will only work if you paid attention when they told you how to energize it for just your seat.
In a bunch of Googling, I wasn’t able to find this. The articles that mention the FCC’s decision say they didn’t find technical justification for the rule - instead, all mentioned the public feedback about not wanting to listen to one side of annoying phone conversations during flight.
A couple of years ago I was told (by a guy who claimed to work for a company involved in cellphone technology) that the issue of a single phone hitting multiple towers is now gracefully handled in software - once you get high enough to reach too many towers, you are denied service.
I’ve checked this several times in small aircraft, and my experience closely matches what this predicts: at low altitudes, the phone works (i.e. bars are displayed); as you climb higher (say, above 6000’ AGL), it doesn’t. The altitude at which service ends depends on how much civilization is nearby: in populated areas (presumably with lots of towers) the cutoff happens at a lower altitude than in remote areas.
I don’t think it’s silly for them to pay attention to public opinion. It’s open to question whether this should be within the purview of the FCC, or of the airlines.
It is a bit silly for a decision based on opinions of passengers in crowded airliners to be applied to private aircraft.
From what I’ve read, there is 15 minutes aboard every flight that you must do nothing and pay attention to what is going on around you:
[ul]
[li]The first five minutes of a flight[/li][li]The last ten minutes of a flight[/li][/ul]
Pay attention at those two times greatly increases your chances for survival in the case of an event because those time are the most dangerous. Of course, quite a few just cannot be bothered and must delve into their smartphone/laptop for as long as possible while flying.
That can be done now. I’ve done it to see. But, no one does it. I think we have a lot more people we can “call” than we care to Skype with. I do IM with my office, and email a lot.
NBC News reported today Delta and JetBlue requested authority to do so from the FAA and it was granted. Both airlines actually began the rollout today.
I could have sworn there was information on this on the FCC web site but I can’t find it now. However, this is what the FCC presently says on their web site:
[QUOTE=FCC]
The FCC determined that the technical information provided by interested parties in response to the proposal was insufficient to determine whether in-flight use of wireless devices on aircraft could cause harmful interference to wireless networks on the ground. Therefore, it decided at that time to make no changes in the rules prohibiting in-flight use of such devices.
[/QUOTE]
It’s admittedly a bit vague, but their reasoning (at least as stated) is purely technical. They mention nothing about public opinion.
The cell tower has no idea what altitude you are at, and does not deny you service based on your altitude. However, it does end up working exactly as you say, just not for the reasons you think.
Cell tower antennas are directional, which makes a lot of sense. By using a directional antenna they increase their range in the horizontal direction while reducing their range in the vertical direction.
This picture has a bunch of nonsense about the so-called danger of cell phone radiation, but ironically it has the best picture I could find showing the antenna beam pattern. So ignore all of the text here and look at the picture.
Once you get above about 5,000 feet or so, you start moving out of the cell phone antenna’s beam pattern and your signal degrades very quickly. Your chances of a cell phone successfully communicating with the tower get worse and worse as the altitude increases. With a little luck you might connect at up to maybe 7,000 or 8,000 feet at best, and once you get above 10,000 feet, forget it. The chances of a successful connection at those higher altitudes is pretty much impossible. You might get some kind of weird signal bounce or you might catch an antenna sidelobe, but the chances of that are very small.
In populated areas with lots of cell towers, they intentionally use less sensitive receivers so that each cell tower can only hear cell phones that are closest to it. Not only does this naturally filter out cell phones that are farther away (and will be handled by other towers anyway) it has a natural side effect of cutting down the sensitivity to airborne cell phones as well. This reduces the height at which you can usually connect over populated areas, though that’s more of a side effect and not anything intentional.
As I mentioned in my post, the denial of service is (at least claimed to be) the result of hitting too many towers. This happens as your altitude increases, but is certainly not due to any direct measurement of altitude.
Correct for towers that are close to you. But when the distance is substantial, the fact that you are 5000’ above the ground does not imply a severe “up-angle”.
By the time that the distance is substantial enough that being 5000 feet above the cell tower doesn’t involve a severe up-angle, you’re way too far away from the cell tower to make a connection to it.
Take a look at the image that engineer_comp_geek links to. Note that the cell tower does have some leakage in the vertical plane, but that this leakage is relatively weak. (It’s also a total waste of power as far as the cell tower engineers are concerned, which is why they design cell towers to minimize this leakage.) Now imagine that your cell phone being both 5000 feet above that cell tower and at a low enough up-angle (less than ten degrees) to make a connection to the cell tower.
Let’s see, if I’m doing my math correctly, sin(angle) = vertical distance / hypotenuse, so sin(ten degrees) = 5000 feet / total distance. Restate that to total distance = 5000 feet / sin(ten degrees), meaning total distance = 5000 / .1736 = roughly 28800 feet. Your cellphone is approximately 5.5 miles away from the cell tower.
