FAR 91.3 Responsibility and authority of the pilot in command.
(Please forgive the following post. If you read any of my other posts, you will see that I do not usually get this emotional about a subject - Anthracite)
I was on a flight where the captain came on and said “my monitors show that some of you have not stowed your traytables prior to landing. You have to do this or we can’t land.” Then after a pause of about 10 seconds, “That’s better, but there’s still one down.” And then 10 seconds later, “Thank you!”
Being an engineer, I knew I had to find out what the deal was. I examined the traytable and the seatback in front of me immediately. Since I was alone in my row, and the stewardesses were seated for landing, I then dropped my traytable and waited for the message from the captain. Nothing. I then pulled the velcro’ed fabric off the back of the seat in front of me to look for some sort of hall-effect sensor, etc. Nothing. No wires in the traytable, or the seatback in front of me. It was just one of those typical low-end-coach-class-domestic-made-by-juvenile-hall-vo-tech-students-construction-seats.
So since I was in the back, and the last one off, I waited behind and asked the captain as I left “OK, I’m stumped. I know there’s no sensor in the seats - how did you know people had traytables down.” I felt like an idiot when he said “I didn’t.”
An equally likely solution (referring to the post I am replying to) is that the stewardess saw more people with electronic devices on than she wanted to deal with, and simply told the captain. Or he was just playing a hunch. Believe me, I’ve had pilots for Southwest come on the intercom and say things that made me wonder if someone else should take command of the plane, because there was obviously a madman at the stick.
As to the original post: I do not believe that a consumer portable electronic device could ever cause a change in the control scenario of a modern airplane UNLESS that was the engineered design of the device.
And on that note : why have there been no instances of crazed terrorists coming on board with a “plane nav disrupter” in their pockets? Or checked as baggage? If there was REALLY a risk, why would they allow portable devices on board at all, when they know that they cannot strip-search everyone before landing to ensure that some guy from Sranton doesn’t have his cell phone on in his jacket the whole trip?
Forgive me if I seem short, but I am a frequent business traveller who has been very badly treated by several airlines, and I believe the real reasons that cell phones are banned is so 1) you are inclined to use the $5/minute airphone, 2) you won’t call to change your ticket to another airline when you find the flight will be late, and 3) people on cell phones in the cramped quarters of the plane can be extremely obnoxious. Yes people are rude and obnoxious with cell phones, especially on planes and in airports. But I think that claims of potential disaster are nothing but “junk science” until there is some more real, repeatable, convincing proof than “a couple planes may have had some electronics quirks that may or may not be due to portable electronic devices that may or may not have been on the plane.”
People may argue that “when the safety of so many is at risk, why take chances”. I agree - if there really is a safety issue, why allow computers or phones even on the aircraft? Treat then like firearms; i.e. have them be declared and checked in a safe, locked container.
Another thing: if safety is so paramount, why is it that they make you do the metal-detector dance at every airport, swab your bags to test for “explosives”, search you and your bags, etc. when down in the baggage handling area it’s like the Wild West? Baggage handlers opening bags, stealing bags and from bags (like all of my insulin and syringes on one trip - and guess what, the $2500 or whatever it is now limit DOES NOT APPLY to most items of value in your luggage, like medicine or electronics), sending drugs and other paraphenalia from airport to airport - I will never take FAA safety regulations seriously until two things happen:
- They find and tell the truth about portable electronic devices, whatever that truth may be.
- They treat your checked luggage with the same level of security that they do for your carry-ons. Then, they won’t have to worry about so many people bringing their luggage on-board so it won’t get stolen or broken into.
How’s that for my first Pit post?
“How come Jesus gets Industrial Disease?”
This is not an FAA regulation. It’s an FCC regulation. There’s a better explanation of it in another thread; but in a nutshell, cell phones operate in “cells”. If you use a cell phone in flight, it accesses several cells at once and disrupts the system. That’s why it’s an FCC regulation.
Because by that time they know it’s safe to throw them around! No explosives! 
Jeez, ya get on the intercom just once and say, “You know, I can kill us allright now…” 
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
Are you a turtle?
Well truthfully, another thing I’ve wondered about is: how well a cell phone will actually work from inside a plane at altitude?
If the FCC explanation is accurate then I could see some better rationale for cell phone bans. However, I have never heard this before; I’ve only heard the electronic device bans in the context of “the cell phone will disrupt airplane avionics”. But I believe that, respectfully, I still have many good points regarding the situation.
“How come Jesus gets Industrial Disease?”
I can’t resist.
[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.]
Cell phones put out a few watts of radio frequency power in the 900 MHz range. When these waves smack into a peice of metal they generate a small electric voltage and current. If the waves happen to run into a peice of metal that is about a foot long, the induced voltage gets much higher due to resonance effects. If that chunk of metal is within a few millimeters of another peice of metal you can get a small spark, which will turn your local Chevron station into a sudden BBQ.
It takes a very particular configuration to make that happen and no properly installed gas storage tank would be capable of such an event. You could probably stand on a gas tank and chat on a cell phone 1000 times over and never have a problem. Probably.
I suspect the deal with electronics on airplanes is along the same lines. I understand that info from instruments scattered around the plane gets relayed to the cockpit in digital form. Even weak interference can screw up a digital data link.
But now we depart from areas where I am familiar enough to open my yap. Any twidgets out there who know the details?
Okay, see if we can agree on these points:
-certain poorly shielded (most likely older) electronic devices emit EMI.
-There is no standard for testing EMI for all electronic devices.
-There are hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of different electronic devices.
-Pilots have reported interference problems which they believe stem from passengers using poorly shielded electronic devices.
-The time that most of the airplanes instruments are in use and interference could cause the most (and most serious) problems are during takeoff and landing.
Agreed?
Then I don’t think that it’s too far of a stretch to say that unless you can prove that your device is not a poorly shielded piece-of-crap then you should stow it for a whole 20 minutes rather than put people’s lives at risk.
Anthracite, good post. I think the whole business of interference is a crock, too. I’ve wondered the same thing you have (why allow them to be carried on at all if there’s ANY danger whatsoever?) and come to the same conclusions.
Everything about flying is a scam and a con. They overbook my flights, board late due to poor scheduling and overly worked pilots onto some plane which should have been retired five years ago, they give me no room for my meager carry-on and then try to squeeze my 6’2" frame into a seat designed for a Korean grandmother, I pay $600 for my seat while the lady next to me in the window seat with the view paid only $450, then they try to distract my attention while we’re wasting half the day on the runway by playing cheezy PR/safety videos over and over on the monitors (the plastic smiles and glazed eyes), when we’re in the air they supply the passengers with alcohol to put them to sleep and then have the nerve to act surprised when some drunk gets loud, they show quite literally the worst Hollywood crap ever filmed (Patch Adams) then have the nerve to ask me to shell out $10 for the honor of listening (note that they design the headphone jacks to ensure that your headphones won’t work), when we land they take forever to unload the baggage (which by now looks nothing like it did when it was loaded) and then the airports have the gall to charge you for using the equivelent of a shopping cart to transport your bags to across their vast, poorly designed facility.
Wow, this is incredible - you must have been on the same flight I was! 
Someday I’ll have to start a new pit thread where I regale everyone with the long, sordid story of my “12-Hour Flight From Kansas City to Dallas”, aka “Fear and Loathing in American Airlines Flight XXXX”. It truly changed my perspective on humanity.
“How come Jesus gets Industrial Disease?”
Snopes says that Cell phones starting fires is unverifiable. However, I did persoanally verify that stattic from the driver’s hand caused two gas tank fires in Alabama. It is probably very rare, but possible.
I heard that the reason for turning off listening device had more to do with being able to hear instructions and warnings than it did with the EM. Don’t know if its true.
Anthracite:
[Someday I’ll have to start a new pit thread where I regale everyone with the long, sordid
story of my “12-Hour Flight From Kansas City to Dallas”, aka “Fear and Loathing in American Airlines Flight XXXX”. It truly changed my perspective on humanity.]
Wouldja, wouldja? Huh? Huh?
C’mon! Pleeeeeze?
The safety briefing is required by FAR 135.117:
You can read all of Part 135 (if you’re interested) at http://www.flightdata.com/far-135.txt
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
Are you a turtle?
You’re right, Sake- its all a scam. You should take the Greyhound instead. It’s much cheaper, your chances of crashing into the side of a mountain are much lower, you can use your cell phone or portable Lean Mean Grillin’ Machine to your heart’s content without worrying about EMI, there’s no surprise when drunks get loud (and its free entertainment to boot!), no safety videos, and you don’t have to worry about them crushing your luggage (stealing it, yes; crushing it, no). In addition, any conversations that you have with your Gummo-esque fellow passengers is bound to be far more interesting than anything on a plane.
Mojo, you are truly an idiot. You and others who unquestioningly conform to needless regulatory and statutory infringement in your daily life, and to seek to impose its enforcement upon others need to seriously consider whether you are mature enough to live in a free society.
There is NO evidence…of any kind…that cell phones, pagers, cd players, or any other consumer electronics devices have interfered with aircraft avionics, guidance systems, radar, or any other aircraft electronics systems. Of course if you as a nanny wish to control the behavior and actions of others who aren’t bothering you, be my guest - just do it in a country where that sort of behavior is encouraged - oops…forgot…the Soviet Union no longer exists. On second thought, just shut up !
Oh for Pete’s sake. Look, I’m a Libertarian, and the last guy that would defend government regulations. In this case, they are taking a prudent precaution. It’s not reasonable to expect every passenger in an aircraft to be a test pilot, and that’s what they are if you allow people to bring any sort of electronics onboard and fire it up willy-nilly. At cruise altitude it’s okay, because there is time to correct potential problems. There’s NO time to correct for the problem during a CAT III approach to minimums. Sorry, but I think it’s reasonable of me to request that you refrain from calling your good buddy on your CB radio with homebuilt 200W linear amplifier while my pilot is trying to shoot a 0/0 landing on the gauges.
Not to be nitpicky, Johnny, but FAR 135 covers “small” commercial operations- commuters, air-taxi, and other “on-demand” operators. FAR 121 covers the air carriers; it is available here. The section covering passenger briefing is Sec. 121.571.
“The best way to do mathematics is to be creatively lazy.” -I. M. Isaacs
This is directed at all of the above who are on the ‘where is the proof’ rant.
Perhaps every mobile phone I have ever had has been defective, but I doubt it.
Have you never noticed what happens to your monitor display when your mobile rings. Have you ever heard what your computer speaker does when someone calls your mobile?
How do you think the electronics in your phone interact with the electronics in your computer or monitor?
Could it be, do you think, EMI?
Do you think a similar effect might be observed with airplane electronics?
Russell
You’re right, KeithT. My copy of the FARs does not contain Part 121. I looked up “Passenger briefing” in the index, found it in Part 135, and then did a search on Infoseek.
Bottom line is that briefings are required. Even though airplanes rarely crash, it’s a good idea to listen to the briefing. Just in case.
As to the OP, I didn’t see “portable electronic devices” in Part 121, but I’m pretty sure that air carriers have to obey Part 135 as well as Part 121 (and Part 91 and Part 61). Whether or not one believes that portable electronic devices cause, or can cause, interference, there is a regulation that prohibits them. Part 91.3 also says the pilot is the boss, and if he tells you to turn off your Walkman, you have to turn off your Walkman.
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
Are you a turtle?
I have absolutely NO sympathy for anyone who stands on their ‘rights’ while in the air. If the pilot says frog, you hop. He’s the final authority, and he’s in the best position to know if air safety requires that everyone hop.
Once you’re on the ground, go ahead and file a complaint or whatever you need to do to soothe your tender ego. But while in a plane in the air on on a ship at sea, do what you’re told and keep your mouth shut.
Dallasguy, maybe I am knuckling under to the Airline cabal. Maybe I should be more skeptical when the people resposible for my safety want to temporarily inconvenience me. Maybe the airline is in on some grand conspiracy.
Or maybe you have a problem with not using a telephone or walkman for a total of 20 minutes so you should buy yourself a Cessna and shut the fuck up.
Johnny, I don’t care if the books say that a passenger’s luggage MUST be lost at least 24% of the time - it’s still preposterous.
Mojo, I suppose you’re the type of guy who would heap sarcasm on an Aushwitz inmate by telling him that, “Yeah, you really have it bad, perhaps you would rather be in one of Stalin’s Gulags because you’d like that a whole lot more, right?”
dhanson & RussellM, the point is that if these devices are dangerous AT ALL they should NOT be allowed as carry-on at all. Even if there’s a 2% chance that my discman’s going seize cockpit controls and release the cargo bay doors, bombing Omaha with 25 tons of luggage, I’d rather just leave the damn thing down below. On second thought. . .the hell with Omaha.
Sam Stone, when you put that right arm down and take the metal pole out of your ass, you might want to get some perspective. Sure, the pilot should be in control, but that doesn’t mean he can rape my girlfriend, scratch my CDs, molest my poodle, yell, “Frog!” or make me sit there listening to his crappy chair radio for the next six hours.
It’s only getting worse. Airbus is planning on introducing a new airframe with something like 550 seats to allow the airlines to shove even moreof us into even smaller seats. That way there will be more disgruntled passengers and crew and whenever one of the planes go down we can have 550 casualties instead of 200!
I will refuse to fly on these new behemouths, but I’m sure Mojo & Sam will be the first ones to jump aboard and wedge themselves into the little seats and sit there obediantly, hands in lap, tray in upright position, praying to THE PILOT, the COPILOT and the HOLY AIRLINE.
Traveling Mountebanks + Mental Institutions always = fun!