I do a decent amount of travelling via airplane for work. Invariably there’s an idiot (usually more than one) who disregards the warnings to not operate electronic devices during takeoff and landing. When I politely ask them to shut it off as it may interfere with the sensitive equipment, I get a “oh, there’s no antenna in this” or “how is a CD player/laptop going to effect the instruments?” as a response. I then will either explain that the instruments are very sensitive and the device you’re using is emitting electromagnetic signals despite it not having an antenna, or explain that I have been on two different flights where they asked people to turn off devices as there was a problem, someone sitting next to me still didn’t turn off their CD player, and they had to come around and check everyone, in one case they delayed landing. This does not convince them.
Is there anything short of throwing their PalmPilot in the potty to convince these people?
EM emissions are known for being capable of setting off certain explosives.
I propose that passengers should have a small explosive pack of EM sensitive material installed into the lap buckle of their seatbelts which would remain fastened at all times.
“Sir, can you turn off your stun gun temporarily? Its interfering with our instruments. Oh, you’re zapping the jackass trying to use his cellphone? I’ll tell the captain to put the plane in a holding pattern.”
In actuality, I don’t see how a CD player, a laptop, nor even a cell phone, could possibly disrupt any of the electronic systems aboard an aircraft. The EM emissions of the first two would be negligible at best, and cell phones don’t broadcast at any of the freeqs used by the airlines.
They must have their reasons, but I don’t believe that EM interference of cross-frequencies are among them. Maybe someone could enlighten me as to why the airlines require these devices to be shut off?
This is getting hard. Somebody relieve me. (A Wallian exclamation)
As has been said, the rule is mostly designed to err on the side of caution, since most commercial aircraft are overdesigned to the point of nausea. I suspect there is a bit of a, “Don’t be a Jerk,” aspect to the rule as well, at least as it is applied.
On a recent flight I watched a member of the cockpit crew march into the cabin and rather belligerently snatch a phone and a laptop from a passenger and walk away with the gentleman’s items without the exchange of a single word. We were in the middle of the Atlantic at the time, and I suspect the issue was more the danger to the other passenger’s sanity than the integrity of the flight itself.
Whatever the motivation, the collective sigh of relief was as close as I’ve ever seen to a standing ovation on an airplane. As with all things, a bit of common courtesy would make a host of rules unnecessary.
Dr. Watson
“This ain’t the Waldorf; if it was you wouldn’t be here.”
You could alwasy try lighting up a cigar next to the AIQ (Asshole In Question) and see what HIS reaction would be! After all, that action is no more legal than the AIQ’s.
Rysdad, here’s a link that provides some info on EMI on airplanes. Most of the examples they cite are anecdotal but similar to the times that it’s happened with flights I’ve been on.
Its similar to the people who smoke at a gas station- they don’t want to be inconvenienced to put their cigarettes out so they’ll tell you how unlikely it is that their cig will cause an explosion. Can you please play the odds when my life isn’t at stake as well?
One note on EMI. The two devices in question need not share operating freqencies in the same band to be susceptable to interference. For example, certain frequencies of VHF Nav/Com tranceivers interfere or are interfered with by GPS receivers. This has to do with the intermediate freqencies that are generated inside each device and not the primary operating freqencies.
I remember one flight where a business couple spent most of the flight playing a PC version of ‘Wheel of Fortune’ with the sound cranked up so it carried through the entire cabin. After several hundred rounds of that cheesy applause and other sound effects I was ready to commit justifiable acts violence.
There are several reasons for this blanket prohibition:
The main one is that the airline has no control over the quality or manufacturing standards of many electronic devices. There are FAA tests that are done to ensure that FCC certified devices can not disable the control system or major avionics, but unless you want airlines to start searching your luggage and confiscating anything that isn’t FCC approved, they have to disallow any use, so your outer-mongolian ghetto blaster with wireless karaoke mike doesn’t cause the ILS needles to point at the ground every time you sing ‘My Way’.
Some of the older computers emitted so much RFI that if you turned one on in the house it would cause your TV to distort in the next room. I remember I could always tell if my TRS-80 was on by turning on a radio anywhere in the house. You could hear the CPU squealing away on many frequencies. In fact, now that I think about it, one of the earliest sound-effects programs I can recall actually modulated processor cycles to create music through RF transmission. By putting a transistor radio near the computer you could could listen to it.
I always thought this sounded like the “don’t use your cellular phone at the gas station” argument. The fear was that the battery in your cell phone may arc, and you would explode in a big ball of petrolium fed flame. No one could prove that had happened, but someone SAID that it had, and so it must be true.
(BTW, they don’t worry about the bigger, more menacing battery in your car; if you leave the radio on in your car, isn’t there just as much “danger”?
This is the way things are going to be, unless it isn’t.
A while ago (year or more) I heard about a flight in the Far East, that would be arriving later than scheduled, due to bad weather. Apparently, a LOT of people got on their cell phones to call the people picking them up at the airport.
The plane crashed.
Can always tell them that. BTW, sorry about the lack of a link.
ATTguy, I’ve been on two different flights where the captain made an announcement that someone’s electronic device was causing interference (with what they never specified) and to please turn off the device. The person next to me would put the CD player out of sight when the stewardesses came by. The captain makes another announcement about the electronic device, in one case the person turned off the CD player, in another case they didn’t until the third warning which caused a delayed landing. Maybe this was an elaborate parlor trick for our benefit or (more likely) it was a poorly shielded electronic device that interfered with an important piece of equipment responsible for our safety.
Bottom line- I have never been on a flight where the captain asked people to turn off an electronic device and one wasn’t on. I have been on two flights where the captain knew someone had an electronic device on, told them to turn it off, and could tell that they had not followed instructions, all without leaving the cabin.