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Comment by tedunangst | Hacker News Reader

The "real" reason for a policy is always more exciting. Watch:

The real reason you have to turn your phone off on a plane is so that you can't record the takeoff and landing. That way, if there's a crash, there's no evidence to dispute the airline's black box version of the story.

Pretty sick, no?

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The people missing the point/satire of this comment are actually airline shills terrified that their secret has just been discovered.

The shills are everywhere, man. Who knows? You could even be a double-shill.

Nonsense. I've never heard that claim. And that policy was in place long before smartphones came along.

That's completely bogus. You only need to turn off the broadcasting it does, and even that was declared unnecessary by the FAA recently(iirc). You can record the takeoff and landing all you want, as long as you aren't affecting other passengers.

Funny story: two years ago, back when anything electronic was banned during takeoff/landing, I was flying to Svalbard. If you don't know it, it's a very beautiful, very cold island north of Norway. During final approach, the sunset was so beautiful that the flight attendants went "ah, screw it" and turned on their phones to take pictures. Naturally everyone else did as well.

In airline accidents, the NTSB and first responders handle the black box recovery. The airline doesn't touch the unit itself. The NTSB techs read the data and CVR audio.

Airlines are not allowed to comment on the investigation (including interpreting black box data) so the only official version is that of the NTSB.

I've never heard of an airline accident in the US where public or passenger video (cellphone or otherwise) contradicted the black box data.

You just gave me a kickstarter project.

Send me your bill in the mail.

Tyler Durden is real, and he reads Hacker News!

What's the REAL reason credit card companies don't keep backups?

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