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Comment by Sporktacular | Hacker News Reader

What am I missing? Comments all seem to be based on a false assumption. Nowhere in the article does it mention battery fires as the reason, or even the word battery/batteries.

The original article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33127459) doesn't mention batteries either, but it would make sense only to effectively put them in airplane mode. Hundreds of tags transmitting is bad for the same reason that phone's have to be shut off during flights. It even says "This is specifically because of the transmission function".

Again, this isn't about battery fires - which is why they are't specifying quartz watches or pocket calculators too, but AirTags.

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The original statement from Lufthansa mentioned that Airtags fall under the category of "Dangerous Goods". "Dangerous Goods" is a term used by the ICAO to refer to batteries or items with batteries (also refers to dangerous chemicals or radioactive material, but if you look at ICAO guidance about Dangerous Goods, the bulk of the guidance is about batteries).

> Hundreds of tags transmitting is bad for the same reason that phone's have to be shut off during flights.

Phones don't have to be shut off during flights. That hasn't been a thing for years.

Any given commercial flight has hundreds of phones, wireless headphones, tablets, smartwatches, etc all transmitting radio signals at significantly higher power than Airtags.

The article never mentions batteries but says specifically it's because of transmissions. If it was for the batteries that would be no reason to take special issue with trackers but ignore portable weighing scales for example.

"Phones don't have to be shut off during flights. That hasn't been a thing for years." During take off and landing they do. Whether of not that's rational or justified is irrelevant. The reason given EMC, not battery safety.

> During take off and landing they do

No, they don't.

You're all over this thread talking about rules that haven't been universal for literally over a decade. Phones haven't had to be turned off for takeoff and landing for over a decade in some places. Radio transmissions haven't had to be disabled (only mobile network transmissions) for years in the USA, Australia and Europe. The Plane Wifi gets turned on when the forward door closes, and doesn't get touched until after everyone deplanes. Bluetooth isn't even disabled by default in Airplane mode anymore. There are very few holdouts on this (Air Canada for example took a very long time to formally allow bluetooth use during flight).

Hell, there's a comment above that points out this document [1], which specifically allows low-powered wireless communication on cargo tracking devices.

[1] https://www.iata.org/contentassets/05e6d8742b0047259bf3a700b...

AirTags don't use Bluetooth! UWB uses a different, relatively untested range of frequencies. The article specifically mentions this is about transmitters. Batteries aren't mentioned as the issue. How many ways does this need to be repeated?

Also, rules for phones are beside the point but I flew on Lufthansa last week. They announced that everyone should switch off phones during the take off and landing. Since Lufthansa is the airline in question, this confirms that they still maintain caution about the issue.

Phones haven't had to be shutoff on flights in years.

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