Passengers in Europe can use the phone while flying | Hacker News Reader

Passengers in Europe can use the phone while flying

english.elpais.com

> Currently, regulations require passenger to turn off their cellphones or activate airplane mode before takeoff and during the entire flight. The practice is a security measure to avoid interference with the plane’s electric and telecommunications systems.

Airplane mode is now mainly for the cellular networks to not have a lot of phones in the plane have handoffs between cell towers all the time. It would be far too easy to do “terrorist attacks” if you could simply bring down a plane with a turned on phone.

> It has also been found that cell towers on the ground can become overwhelmed due to phones in the sky. With how quickly airplanes travel, cellular signals would have to be bounced off of cell towers at high speeds.

https://nci.edu/2022/06/06/everything-you-need-to-know-about...

Yeah also because departure and landings are the most critical times for aviation safety. If you're jabbering away on your mobile phone then you are not paying attention to the stewardess who is demonstrating important safety features that could save your life one day. Also if the aircraft encounters difficulty and there is a real emergency, you don't want a bunch of people enslaved to their electronic masters rather than having situational awareness and responding and obeying the flight safety crew (the crew is there to ensure your safety, not to feed you Coke and pretzels.)

100% of my flights they have just fed me Coke and pretzels. And every time I read of a plane going down, everyone on the plane died. So could you point me towards info that flight crew were able to save more lives than they themselves lost by simply being in the plane where everyone perished?

This sounds awful: flying is already a terrible experience, and people suck. On my flight last week, some asshole had to be repeatedly told by a stewardess he had to use headphones to watch a video, instead of making everyone within 10 feet listen to it. Loud phone calls will definitely improve this experience.

>This sounds awful: flying is already a terrible experience, and people suck. On my flight last week, some asshole had to be repeatedly told by a stewardess he had to use headphones to watch a video, instead of making everyone within 10 feet listen to it. Loud phone calls will definitely improve this experience.

This was my reaction as well. I'm not concerned with radio interference as I am the behavior of the humans making phone calls. Every time I go to the grocery store, there's at least one person walking around with their speaker phone on and headset to their mouth just carrying on as if they're the only one around; I can hear their entire conversation 4 isles over.

I have to admit multiple times I FaceTime Video called my mom from various grocery stores around the world to show her what they're like.

Or they are just plain facetiming, because you gotta do that video call from the cereal aisle

I like to think of good noise isolating headphones as a self defense feature on planes. With them I can mute just about any noise in the cabin, and also look unavailable for small talk. With sunglasses on, hoodie on, and headphones in people tend to leave you alone, plus it's easier to sleep

I hope that you've counted how many paces it is to the emergency exit, in case the cabin depressurizes, fills with smoke, and you've made a water landing.

Don't tell anyone but the pilots are wearing sunglasses and headphones too. Perhaps you've heard of aviators?

I agree. Already I hate the children who scream, but anyway people are already talking and also the engine noise is very annoying. In the end I like the ability to use internet, not talk, strictly with ANC headphones.

In my experience no body followed the calls to shut their devices down. But because there is no internet, people rarely use their phones anyway.

interesting as on my most recent flight in Europe, announcements were made to turn off all electronics on take off (and landing); while, this hasn't been requested on US flights for many years now

I suspect we will see more air rage videos in our future.

I am not sure what I am missing here.

If you are doing a call through the airplane wifi connection you could already do that.

If you are doing a GSM call I doubt that you will be able to have any reception at cruise altitude?

This means people will only be calling or messaging shortly before/after take off (which they were doing anyway) which well, changes nothing other than not getting asked by airplane staff to enable flight mode.

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