If they were dangerous they wouldn’t allow them on the plane.
People keep posting about the use of cell phones and texting while on an airplane and how it doesn’t make the plane exp0de!!11!
That’s not what the OP is talking about.
ETA: (I could be wrong, but I thought this issue was that this person was just disregarding the ‘no electonics during take off/landing’ rule, and didn’t say anything about the use of the phone or text part of the cell).
Exactly. I’m reminded of this Mitch Hedberg bit:
I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, “You’re gonna have to move, you’re blocking a fire exit.” As though if there was a fire, I wasn’t gonna run. If you are flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.
I was talking to a Catholic priest once when I was submitting a bid for a sound system for their parish, and we were discussing various things. He said that a lot of people criticize “cafeteria Catholics” but he said that “we all are cafeteria Catholics, it’s just a question of which things we ignore.”
I’m got a “Law & Order” type of BIL, with absolutely no tolerance for people who break the rule. Well, the rules he thinks shouldn’t be broken. We were driving on a freeway once and there was a funeral procession traveling along exactly at the speed limit, and there would occasionally be people who would slowly pass it; which would visibly upset him. Apparently in Georgia, there is a law that you cannot pass a police escort.
He had absolutely no problem with speeding. He does it all the time. But when there is a police escort for the funeral procession, then *that *is wrong. That strikes me as arbitrary. If you are going to site safety reasons, then you shouldn’t speed in the first place. Likewise, if the question is about police escorts, the underlying problem is that long funeral processions themselves are a problem; and this is getting recognized.
When I fly planes, I dutiful turn off my electronics because the cabin attendants have to enforce the violations which they see. I wouldn’t hide mine because that seems a silly thing for a 50-year-old man to do, and I usually have a book along as well.
If someone else is breaking the electronic rules, then it wouldn’t bother me because it’s doing no harm either to the electronics on the aircraft or to society. The plane will not lose navigation equipment, nor will anarchy rule just because some jerk in 39C is a little sneaky.
I probably would have done the same as the OP, because exit row people should at least pretend to be paying attention and not making the flight attendants’ jobs harder. (Bitches always get the nice roomy exit rows when my long-legged husband and I could use that room…)
As for the no-electronics-on-during-takeoff-and-landing side argument, I can’t find the column right now, but the pilot who writes Salon.com’s “Ask the Pilot” column said that a big reason is that typically, things are most likely to go Very Wrong during and soon after both takeoff and landing, and you really don’t want metal-and-glass objects getting hurled around the plane if there’s a huge jolt. (It was written soon after Alec Baldwin got smacked down for playing Words With Friends when they were trying to take off.)
Or you might read this:
I personally think Boeing knows more about what is safe inside one of their aircraft than anyone here, or John Nance.
So do you have a problem with people sleeping, reading, daydreaming, or being otherwise not alert while in an over wing exit row?
I certainly wouldn’t press the call button to alert a flight attendant, but if one was walking by, I might point at the person. Only in the hopes that my pointing would distract the flight attendant enough that she wouldn’t notice that I was reading my kindle while listening to headphones and sending a text.
ETA: In all seriousness, I’ll slip my devices in the seat pocket in front of me until the FAs are strapped in. I don’t bother turning them off, and I usually start using them again right away, or at least once we’re in the air. I’m surprised how many people follow the rule. After forgetting about a device in my carry-on or jacket pocket a few times, I realized that a half dozen or so people must forget on every flight.
That report, as shown, is meaningless. It doesn’t define what they are referring to as safe, what distances or what equipment they suspect of receiving interference.
Now, if the report were to say that signals of XX frequency over a level of YY can cause ZZ equipment to fail, then let’s talk. Otherwise, if all they have is unreproducible, unverifiable incidents then they’ve got nothing.
We’re talking about battery powered products whose radiated energy follows the inverse-square law. I would really like to see how much energy and at what frequency the output is, and what equipment is vulnerable at what levels. But, I’m pretty sure that the later information would not be made public.
I voted “no, for not doing any harm.” I had heard before that cell phones don’t interfere with airplanes (and lets face it, if it did, you would’ve heard about actual crashes and such - just like you hear about all those explosions caused at the gas stations…) Rick’s link is interesting though.
I turn off my own stuff, but that’s just to avoid possibly getting in trouble. But I won’t report someone else for doing it.
Wouldn’t do a damn thing. I follow the rule for the most part, but I’ve known the rule in bunkum for some time. There really is a logic to paying attention as close as one can during that start and end of a flight (when things are more likely to go wrong and you are able to do something about it.)
But the presumption is that a non-iPad or iPhone user is paying attention, and that’s flawed, of course.
A few years ago the BBC programme Horizon did a show about how people behave during disasters like plane crashes. It was fascinating - many people give up, freeze, or otherwise don’t attempt to save themselves. It has to do with the “automaticness” of one’s response. If you have to think about it, you’re less likely to do it.
The expert said that you should count the seats to the nearest exit, so you can get out quickly. Another interesting finding was the number of bodies near the main exit, but very few at the secondary exit just a few feet away.