If that were the case - where there was ever even one flight where their best guess was a cell phone was interfering, I’d think they’d make it a much bigger deal - like, you have to check your cell phone. If you even have a cell phone on your person they don’t let you on the flight.
Yeah, this. I took it as Baldwin mostly poking fun at himself with Seth constantly asking “Alec, are you sure this is a good idea?”
If it was hilariously funny, I would forgive it. But it wasn’t. The possibility was there, with Baldwin having played pilots (and even Pan Am head Juan Tripp) in movies, and with his Capital One stuff having a lot of airline tie ins. But it didn’t go there. They could have played the tape of Baldwin yelling at his daughter calling her a selfish pig, but as yelling at him, calling him a selfish pig… that would have been funny. But it wasn’t funny. In all fairness, SNL is not usually in its 35 year history been funny, usually only a couple of bits in any given show.
A misfire, because by playing the part of the pilot, even though obviously satiric, Baldwin still made the pilot look silly. And of course that made Baldwin’s ego even more apparent.
The whole thing worked for me. the Steve Rogers = CPT America linkage. Seth breaking in. The absurdly extreme “apology”.
There are intentional transmitters (cell phones, wifi, 3G data) and then there’s rfi interference that’s governed by FCC Part 15 that all electronics emit to varying levels. The FAA takes a conservative approach: why take the risk of having 100+ running electronic devices somehow flummox the aircraft’s avionics in some previously unanticipated manner when the alternative is a minor inconvenience to the passengers.
I don’t think even Alec Baldwin would deny he’s an egotistical egocentric horse’s ass with a major temper problem- his call to his daughter (that admittedly should never have been released to media [it wasn’t like Mel Gibson’s call to his ex, just a really pissed off dad]), his various scrapes with the law and out-of-control rants over the years (remember his ‘yeah, you’re at about a 12, need to be at a 4’ nutty rant about Henry Hyde back during Monica-Gate?), and if I knew him I probably wouldn’t want him on my speed dial list because he seems very high maintenance and self absorbed.
But I thought the sketch was funny and brilliant also. He’s not denying he did something wrong, but he’s opening up a venue to show the silliness of the situation, and anybody who’s flown since 9-11 has stories about the increasing silliness of the rules and regulations.