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Comment by raquo | Hacker News Reader

If it malfunctions you don't want it to overheat and burn the plane down. Thus the ability to cut power.

One might say the same about all of the electronic devices on planes. Cellphones and the like.

Hey man what are you doing! We can finally use our devices during take off and now you hint at keeping them off permanently! Eek! :P

I'm sure the first battery meltdown/fire on a plane is going to cause a riot in the news but the odds...

That did cross my mind when I posted it.

I should point out that I don't know what is true. It just seems to be a contradiction that every passenger can take on board and use whatever they want in-flight, yet transponders specially engineered to be safe on a plane must be able to be disabled.

I suspect the answer is that the transponder doesn't need to be under the control of anyone on the plane.

The answer is that when there's 100+ planes parked at an airport it's confusing to have 100's of transponders on as other planes are trying to land.

so just have a load cells on the undercarriage and a circuit that detects when a plane is landed so that you can only turn off the transponder when the plane is landed.

Maybe it has to do with the location on the transponder? A laptop in baggage or an electrical component buried deep in the bowels of the plane would be hard to get to in the event of a potential fire. A passenger's laptop would be fairly easy to put out with a fire extinguisher.

This device is a bigger piece of equipment using more power, with physical interconnects to other areas on a plan. Moreover it normally not located a place where you can lift it up and throw it in a bucket of water, or rip out its battery if something should go wrong.

And this is why Li-ion batteries are no longer allowed in checked bags.

they're not? I travelled with 2 laptops in my checked luggage in January.

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