Airline industry divided over passenger electronics
bloomberg.com
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The probability that something happens is minuscule, but above zero.
Other examples where the trade off between security and convenience has to be made is the driving of cars and liquids on a plane. I'm really curious in which direction this debate will swing. (FTR: I'm all for convenience ;) )
The reports are for suspected interference. It has never been proven beyond reasonable doubt.
No. This is about security theater and nothing more. Beyond a few anecdotes, we have zero evidence that the practice of making people turn off their devices actually makes flights safer.
I'm pretty sure that only 30% of people admit to not turning off their devices. How many won't admit it? I'm pretty sure if they did a scan for Bluetooth devices during take-off the number would always be non-zero.
If I understand your first sentence correctly, you're saying that there is a high probability that the resolution of the problem was non-coincidental, i.e. turning off the phone solved the problem. This doesn't really gel with your second paragraph, though. Can you clarify?
On my recent flights, I've observed that very few of my neighbors completely powered off their devices and at least one did not turn on airplane mode (he told me so).
I would think that the 30% number is much higher, and probably rising as the years go on and more people forget or care less.
And how many don't even know?
99.99% is 1::10,000. Multiply that by 643 million passengers per year (http://www.transtats.bts.gov/), and you get a lot of interference (64,300 passengers whose devices interfere...).
I believe that the chance of any typical passenger device interfering with critical plane systems is much less that 0.01%, but we need to be careful with seemingly unlikely events multiplied by large numbers.
This is a situation where we need to move beyond platitudes and run some actual experiments, preferably random controlled trials. Load a couple of planes with several hundred smartphones and tablets each. Have the devices on one plane turned off and the devices on the other turned on. Fly a third plane completely empty as a control group. Measure the interference on all three planes and then compare the numbers.
But perhaps not for the other passengers, which is the issue here.
Really? Let's follow your logic. There were 639 000 000 passengers last year. Lets say one tenth follow your thinking. Multiply that by .0001 you get 6390 potentially deadly events of interference. Would that be ok by you?
I tell you something it would not be ok by me if I was on one of those flights.
Of course the number is probably a lot lower than 0.0001. But it is still too high. The number of recorded events of interference are too high.
What this proves is that you are obviously not equipped to make decisions that affect my life and you should not try. You should follow the rules that are obviously the result of much more informed decision making that you are showing here.
And I wonder what part of your electrical engineering coursework makes you think it is ok to keep your devices on during takeoff. You certainly should know that your device emits EM waves even if it is in "airplane mode".
Regardless I am quite sure that he is far better 'equipped' to decide his own certainty, just as you are yours.
Furthermore, avionics equipment should be and is designed to work despite minor external interference. If a consumer electronics device, such as an iPhone or laptop, could drastically effect the operation of avionics equipment, it should not be considered flight worthy. Granted, certification tests probably don't consider such radiation sources, but the risk is so small its likely its not even worth testing.
The second paragraph - sure, fine. I think that's what we all want to know.
No, but I would expect one of the pilots to notice something that looks, smells, or feels like electronic interference, and ask the FA's to make an announcement asking everyone to make sure their devices are off because actual interference has been found and is causing a problem.
The typical pilot's mindset is, "Fly the plane but, when a problem occurs, stop focusing on flying the plane and solve/identify the problem. Once the problem is solved/identified, get back to flying the plane." You're effectively wanting to change this to something more like, "Fly the plane but, when a problem occurs, stop focusing on flying the plane and solve/identify the problem except if the problem is 'electrical interference'. If that's the case, ask yet again that people turn their phones off. Hopefully they'll listen this time. Wait for all of the people to comply and, once the problem is solved, get back to flying the plane."
It just sounds silly, doesn't it? I think we'd all agree that, if there's a problem with electrical interference during flight, we want the pilot to be flying the plane rather than having him/her wait for the passengers to do anything. Again - I'm not arguing whether this is right/wrong; I'm simply pointing out that the logic of having a pilot wait on passenger behaviors before being able to continue doing his/her job is a bit silly.
Why? Because anyone who has flown and forgot to put their phone in airplane mode and didn't experience a firey death can attest, the usual warnings lack both urgency and a factual connection to reality. Having them announce "there is a problem due to interference" solves both of these.
If a passenger's device is causing actual interference, then what other option does the pilot have?
You want pilots to be troubleshooting malfunctioning avionics and summoning FA's to try to find someone's iPhone during a critical phase of flight, for no other reason than to allow a passenger the convenience of not having to shut his phone off? No thanks.
Hearing, "if there's problems, we'll just have the FA's make an annoucement" doesn't exactly quiet my concerns. If we're going to be using our smartphones on airplanes I want it to be after thorough, deliberate, conclusive testing has been done that proves that the aircraft is safe to fly with hundreds of cell phones transmitting in the passenger compartment.
I don't see a problem with the logic. If personal electronic devices could truly cause interference, then just reminding people to turn off devices seems like pretty weak protection.
How many people intentionally or unintentionally leave an electronic device powered on during any given flight? I know I've forgotten to turn off my phone a couple of times in the past.
Only going as far as reminding people to turn off devices is the equivalent of airport security checkpoints that just have a person standing there reminding people to remove dangerous items from their bags before boarding.
If the radios are simply on, link layer protocols will be transmitting control signals that can easily be detected with something as simple as a smart phone.
Flying in the upper atmosphere? Loads of radiation. A lot more than any phone.
RF in multipath environments tends to be spooky.
This conservative approach is a pain, it's slow, it's expensive. But it's hard to have such a safe environment for commercial aviation without a similar culture.
>I don't see any more quantitative arguments from you.
You don't see, or you don't care to see?
OTOH, I do have some insight into aeronautical safety, and I'm trying to present that viewpoint, which is clearly lacking in this comment thread.
Even in the absence of hard data, I would prefer to ensure all cockpit instruments work with minimal interference, than read another email or send another tweet. Then when data is available to make a conclusion as to the effect or lack thereof, informed decisions can be used to create procedures.
People are so attached to their devices that they take any inconvenience towards using them as some sort of rights violation.
And I would reiterate, this is during the brief period of takeoff and landing.
I have been in tech for 29 years, and I am a licensed commercial pilot in both fixed wing and rotorcraft (but I don't work as a professional pilot.) I don't know what effect my iPhone would have on aircraft instruments, so I turn it off.
Pre-flight and in-flight procedures are based on what is known, and what helps to prevent problems from the unknown. The safety of flight is in part about not taking unnecessary risks. For example, if I have to visibility into a cloud (radar, instruments) I do not fly through a cloud.
I apply this logic to during the critical periods of takeoff and landing, if I am unsure a device that emits RF will affect my instruments, I shut it off. Inconvenience does not outweigh safety, even / especially if the effect on safety is unknown. The worst case scenario, although likely minor, is simple not worth the risk.
CpE here. The vast majority of communications links on planes use twisted-pair differential signaling [1], which is extremely resistant to RF interference.
I've also worked on test procedures for avionics equipment, and assure you that RF interference testing is a part of all test plans for such equipment. The types of interference we tested against were far more aggressive than those that any consumer electronics can emit.
Keep in mind that the FCC also aggressively regulates RF emissions from all consumer electronics devices. Testing against FCC regulations is an involved and expensive affair, and the vast majority of devices are forbidden from any powerful RF emissions.
> if I am unsure a device that emits RF will affect my instruments, I shut it off. Inconvenience does not outweigh safety, even / especially if the effect on safety is unknown. The worst case scenario, although likely minor, is simple not worth the risk.
If phones or other complex electronic devices truly can interfere with avionics, their presence should be forbidden in the passenger cabin. It wouldn't be hard to detect them during security screening.
I conjecture the reason that this hasn't happened is because the risk of such interference is a practical impossibility for the reasons stated above.
That said, care to speculate why the prohibition on device use during takeoff / landing?
Payoff matrix is pretty much locked on status quo for now, maybe it will soften to "up to the airline but we advise against it" at some point and some of the smaller airlines will differentiate by allowing it and after a couple years the dam will burst.
It doesn't really matter whether passengers obey the cabin crew in most situations, but the two you mention are exceptions. Particularly during landing, if some moron is dancing around in the aisle, she is likely to hurt herself or someone else. The airline is the only deep pocket in that situation, so it's considered very important that passengers submit at that time. The more random rules they can heap on (keep your windowshade up, keep all your items under the seat, no Gameboy-playing, etc.), the more cowed the passengers and the more rare the expensive injury lawsuit.
It's like those religions that really depend on their congregants' obeying to the point of never really thinking: all of those ban the consumption of alcohol.
You see, I did not need to know what he said in order to know that the rule didn't make sense (although I do appreciate the info). There are a few problems with your default position of "minimize risk because we don't know". If you don't know, how is it different from the 13th floor being bad luck? Something bad might happen if you visit that floor. To minimize risk, we should just avoid it?
Generally, the burden of proof has to be on whoever makes a claim that something exists. The existence of the rule is essentially that claim. The creation of the rule was not backed by any particular study or data. You speak dismissively of what you perceive to be speculation, yet that is entirely what the rule is based on (you also said not being afraid of these ghosts is the paranoid behavior, but I digress).
To introduce a little logic - we know that this has more than likely been tested. The fact that it's a concern at all means it's a safe bet that experiments have been done. If said experiments found anything at all that causes danger to a flight, it defies reason that they would not implement a hard ban on the devices and screen for them. There would be penalties and fines. Instead, a polite attendant asks that they be turned off. Does this make sense to you? It tells me that they aren't very serious about it. There is no way that anything potentially dangerous would be trusted to "the honor system".
Once a rule is in place, it's difficult to change it, so it remains the default. Wireless signals are the modern day version of ghosts. They might cause cancer, they might crash planes, they might microwave your lunch. Of course, we have no reason to believe that they do any of these things - we just don't have a reason to believe that they don't. As a scientist, it is your duty to reject this invalid line of reasoning.
It bears mentioning here that the FAA approves ipads in the cockpit itself as a replacement for flight charts[1]. And many airlines give their pilots ipads.
Why do I think it's safe? Because rules don't control reality, only people's behaviors do. In reality, we fly with our electronics on every single large flight, and they are not crashing or experiencing any particular problems. The only reason the rules are still there is that nobody wants to run the risk of being the one who gets blamed for some problem, because after some crash or something, somebody else who labors under the delusion that the rules actually mean something will pin the blame on the electronic devices, falsely, and by extension, the one who lifted the rules.
That's it. That's the only thing keeping this rule in place. It sure isn't physics. I don't have to be an EE or anything else, we've run this experiments hundreds of thousands or millions of times already.
That said, your little planes may have their own issues and this experience may not apply to your plane. But we're talking commercial flights here.
1) If 30% of the passengers leave their devices on today, leaving 100% of the devices on won't cause any increase in problems, and
2) If something happens it's either a) nothing, or b) the airplane falls out of the sky.
The fact is that an airplane is an incredibly complex machine. Instrument failures happen all the time, and pilots deal with this (they have redundant instruments and alternate procedures they can follow). If some of these problems happen due to interference from electronic devices, that's pretty much impossible to verify.
And my buddy at work takes flying lessons from a pilot who leaves his on so he can check weather and use other cute apps. As do probably numerous other less-enlightened pilots. So where is the epidemic of anomalous readings?
The best argument I've heard is that its about distraction (EDIT: and in-cabin projectiles), and takeoff/landing are more prone to harsh landing situations.
The argument is similar to subjecting yourself to radiation in the off chance that it (scanner) might detect yourself as a terrorist.
Also this is not a security issue (one of persons with malicious intent). It is a safety issue, one of incompletely studied electronic effects.
>incompletely studied electronic effects.
Are you an electrical engineer, or similarly educated in RF communications, and thus able to determine whether the EMI testing that's been done is incomplete?
That's why people are so resistant; the whole thing has the stench of unsubstantiated BS about it. Kinda like the TSA.
But there are thousands of models of phones, tablets, wifi cards, 3g cards, bluetooth accessories, LTE/WiMax cards, gps devices, etc., etc., etc.
Then we get into the wide variety of planes in the air with varying amounts and types of avionics, radios, etc. And those systems are in different places in different planes.
And don't forget aftermarket alterations both in software and hardware (i.e. custom firmware, different batteries) to those devices.
So your test wouldn't be too hard, but the result it seems you want (i.e. a definitive answer on the safety of electronics use by passengers on aircraft) takes a hell of a lot more legwork.
Likewise, you can test your database server for all known exploits and it might come up clean, but if you open your firewall you can still be hacked if someone later on finds a new exploit. A security minded person would ask you: "Was it _really_ necessary to open that port, of could you have inconvenienced your developers a little bit and made them use a VPN instead?"
Trust me, this isn't the only rule in aviation that seems stupid, but the mindset that results in rules like this has had a positive effect on aviation safety.
So, our defense against potentially dangerous future electronics devices is a generic safety announcement at the beginning of the flight with only cursory verification that it was followed?
Likewise, airlines have a "clean cockpit" policy disallowing small talk during landings. Do they monitor the CVRs and fine pilots who break this rule? I don't think so. Will some pilots find the rule exessive and make exceptions? Maybe. But the rule still has an effect, and is in place because of previous accidents where distracted pilots have been a contributing factor.
While I think this rule about electronic devices might be too stringent, and that it will eventually change, I don't think the airlines have overblown it. Pilots will handle instrument failures gracefully in 99.99% of all cases, and then there's the fatal accident where some stupid malfunction caused the pilot to screw up (AF447, and many others before). Because they know this is a "numbers game", they try to minimize potential problems, even though they may not be able to eliminate them altogether.
If somebody told me not to fart during takeoff and landing (because it might change trajectory of the plane — you never know…), then I'd still protest even though it _might_ be safer not to fart.
Phones are supposed to pass FCC EMI tests and I expect planes' electronics to be properly hardened/shielded from EMI even stronger than tiny consumer devices can produce.
Flying on a plane is already far and away the most miserable way for me to travel, don't take away my goddamn ipod.
[edit] seems like I can't change it anymore. I tried changing it to "Airline industry still divided over usage of personal electronics and their supposed interference"
One interesting one was the health effects of having 200-300 mobile phones ranging at full power inside a sealed metal tube in the sky. Not so much an issue for passengers, but flight crew on long haul flights subject to these signal levels for 8 or 9 hours several days a week! Obviously Airplane mode would solve this but telling everyone to switch off sounds a better way of enforcing this. Of course this assumes there are any adverse health effects from mobile phones at all, but that's a whole different can of worms.
Another 'theory', I've since dismissed, relating to the requirement to switch off particularly at take off and landing, is because a plane load of 300 mobiles roaming between base stations at 400mph can cause the mobile operators a few headaches!
Unfortunately, perfect resistance is impossible (see GPS and LightSquared).
The notion that you should turn off "anything with an off switch" as an open-loop solution to the problem is folly. Short of removing the batteries from a device, it's hardly guaranteed that it is truly de-powered.
Furthermore, plenty of things don't have an off switch. Pebble watches run via Bluetooth. I doubt users think to turn them off.
It's not an easy problem. Sealing the passenger cabin into a Faraday cage may be the only way to ensure RF isolation of instrumentation.
On the subject of LightSquared, I know quite a few people who belonged to that project and I think there's a lot more going on there than meets the eye.
In the days following the DoD test for GPS there were a lot of outcries of fraudulent testing parameters that got thrown around and were never really resolved to anyones satisfaction. I still contend that low-orbit satellites can provide a potent and real alternative to the wireless systems we have today (or at least as a distribution path for backhaul).
I'm still quite hopeful that the LightSquared kids will get a spectrum swap now that Obama has been settled in the office for a while. Here's hoping; it would be a net-boon for the whole wireless industry.
/End Tangent
I also am quite bad at classical physics, so I don't know the limitations of such a cage.
Passenger electronics are so obviously safe that screening for them would break suspension of disbelief even in the airport security theater.
Regardless, the data doesn't seem to concretely prove that phones are causing any of the problems
The person next to me just lied and said he had and ipod touch ...