Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikeryan | Hacker News Reader

There's a pretty robust wikipedia article about this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft

Thanks for the link, a few good quotes from there:

Now this I can definately belive: "the report concludes that the primary reason for the ban on cell phone use in flight is that neither the FAA nor the FCC are willing to spend the money to perform conclusive safety tests. "

God flight attendant observations? Thats the evidence that is reliable? How could you isolate for all the other factors? "However a few reports state that anomalies were observed to appear and disappear as the suspect device was turned on and off which would indicate a high degree of correlation."

"Degrees of correlation or confidence were not among the data summarized in the report."

"There is no smoking gun to this story: there is no definitive instance of an air accident known to have been caused by a passenger's use of an electronic device. "

This is my point - are we still in 1984? "will exceed demonstrated susceptibility levels for equipment qualified to standards published prior to July 1984"

BBC report: "most of the evidence is circumstantial and anecdotal. There is no absolute proof mobile phones are hazardous."

"Whether interference from small battery-powered devices should have any influence on electronic systems that should be designed to fly through lightning storms without failing is often disputed by critics of the ban."

This is my point - are we still in 1984?

No, but I'm pretty sure the point is that planes from 1984 are still in use.

The airframes might be, but they definitely have been upgraded/retrofitted with newer gear.

My favorite is the industrial, hardened switch for 'Internet Off' on Delta flights with onboard Wifi now (which I can't believe I can't find a picture of!).

If I can use WiFi on the plane while it's flying, why not while it's taking off and landing?

Because if something goes wrong the pilots have a lot more of time for a corrective action during flight. Not so much during take off and landing.

Not really.

Planes are removed from service, every internal bit is replaced every few years.

To cut the FAA/FCC a bit of slack, its not as easy as one test - one result. There are so many existing permutations of airplane electronics and changing cellphone technologies that its almost impossible and really not economical to test them all. So it is actually much easier to just say no.

"The cost of an accident, should one occur, could be extremely high in terms of human life and the risk is completely avoidable in that no one absolutely needs to use their mobile phone in flight."

compare it to:

"The cost of an accident, should one occur, could be extremely high in terms of human life and the risk is completely avoidable in that no one absolutely needs to eat meat to survive, they can eat vegetables."

I understand what you're getting at here, but eating meat isn't associated with the risk of causing 400 other people to die with you in a fiery plane crash.

Now whether or not such a risk exists is another question entirely.

Unless you like eating the meat of 400 people, anyway.

That's a weak analogy. More like "The cost of an accident, should one occur, could be extremely high in terms of human life and the risk is completely avoidable in that no one absolutely needs to eat meat in flight, they can eat vegetables."

If that was scientifically plausible, I'd be happy to eat my broccoli in flight.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com