FAA To Allow Use of Most Electronic Devices Throughout Flights 221
alstor writes "As previously expected, the FAA has announced that most portable electronic devices may be used throughout the duration of a flight. Mobile phones may still only be used in airplane mode without cellular service."
Best of both worlds (Score:5, Insightful)
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but you still won't have to put up with the passenger next to you carrying on a loud phone conversation
Yeah, but now us old hams can chat up the "local" repeater and talk about our surgeries and medications and how the weather is at 30,000 feet. I'll clip onto the plane's frame for an antenna and fire up my QRP rig and have a CW conversation. It's gonna be fun.
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I'm pretty sure radios capable of transmission are still a no-no.
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I'm pretty sure radios capable of transmission are still a no-no.
It does help if you read the actual article before you say something like that. The FAA is rather specific about not using cell phones, and just as explicit that other transmitters (like wifi and bluetooth) are perfectly acceptable. And the only reason they are explicit about cell phones is not because of the transmitter technology, but the FCC frequency allocations for some of the frequencies involved are land mobile only, not air mobile.
The US military has come up with a system called GIIEP [giiep.us] (pronounced
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You might want to think again. Look at appendix B of http://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviation_industry/airline_operators/airline_safety/info/all_infos/media/2013/InFO13010SUP.pdf [faa.gov] which has some supplementary information on the actual report at http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/ped/media/ped_arc_final_report.pdf [faa.gov]
They specifically state that T-PED (Transmitting Personal Electronic Device) is covered by the ARC report. And handheld amateur radio transmitters with power from 1W to 7W are also specifically ment
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Now THAT is interesting!
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Pretty sure that's covered under Part 97.11...
97.11 Stations aboard ships or aircraft.
(a) The installation and operation of an amateur station on a ship or aircraft must be approved by the master of the ship or pilot in command of the aircraft.
(b) The station must be separate from and independent of all other radio apparatus installed on the ship or aircraft, except a common antenna may be shared with a voluntary ship radio installation. The station's transmissions must not cause interference to any other apparatus installed on the ship or aircraft.
(c) The station must not constitute a hazard to the safety of life or property. For a station aboard an aircraft, the apparatus shall not be operated while the aircraft is operating under Instrument Flight Rules, as defined by the FAA, unless the station has been found to comply with all applicable FAA Rules.
So, as long as you get permission from the pilot in command, go for it. Just like before.
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(a) The installation and operation of an amateur station on a ship or aircraft must be approved by the master of the ship or pilot in command of the aircraft.
Installation AND operation. Maybe clipping onto the chassis is "installation", but holding the radio in my hand next to the window isn't. Were it "installation or operation", you'd be right.
So, as long as you get permission from the pilot in command, go for it. Just like before.
No, actually, not like before. The pilot in command doesn't have the authority to approve use of amateur radios on board "an aircraft operated by a holder of an air carrier operating certificate or an operating certificate". That's 91.21(c) [cornell.edu] of the federal aviation regulations, which just happens to be the rule that n
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They do not do this to 1st class assholes. The airlines are afraid if upsetting them. I personally want to see the air marshall put a pistol in the guys face and take the phone.
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I don't really like flying due to my height, but I *love* when this happens. I know, it's kinda cruel, but sometimes I just like seeing simple requirements enforced on those who are too cool to otherwise follow the rules.
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I don't know what airline YOU fly, but any flight attendant on any flight I've ever been on would make the passenger hang up, and if they refused, they'd call over the sky marshal.
Sky Marshall? What kind of a dictatorship do you live in?
Re:Best of both worlds (Score:5, Insightful)
that all rules are silly.
Who believes that all rules are silly? It's only the rules people don't like that are silly. The ones that affect others are great.
Re:Best of both worlds (Score:5, Insightful)
Who believes that all rules are silly? It's only the rules people don't like that are silly.
No, it's rules that they don't understand that they think are silly. And evidence shows that many people who use cell phones believe there is some magic involved that carries their voice to the intended recipient. That's why back in the 90's a vocal group of idiots managed to get laws enacted [textfiles.com] to insure their privacy while using analog CDMA cell phones. After all, it was a CELL PHONE and they had every reason to expect privacy in their conversation, even though they were using RADIO to send their VOICE over the public's airwaves. Thus it became illegal, and remains illegal to this day, for the sale or import of certain kinds of radios that can receive frequencies allocated to cellular telephone services.
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CDMA is not analog.
And I'm confused about some of your other comments... AFAIK there are many products (expensive, mind you) that can listen in on cellular frequencies, whether analog or digital. These are used in cell phone/base station design all the time.
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CDMA is not analog.
Ok. My bad.
And I'm confused about some of your other comments... AFAIK there are many products (expensive, mind you) that can listen in on cellular frequencies,
Yes, there are. That's why I said "certain kinds of radios". Those the public would be most likely to buy are the main target. Scanners, for example. Some "communications receivers" can receive cell frequencies, but the dealer may limit purchase to authorized government agencies (this one [aorusa.com], for example.) The key words to look for are "cellular blocked".
The FCC could not simply ban every radio capable of receiving cell signals. That would have made it illegal for HP to sell the CDMA service moni
Re: Best of both worlds (Score:2)
I wonder what the Doppler shift would be like? Doing CW on LEO satellites can be challenging because of this.
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LEO is a lot faster than the crusing speed of a 757. The doppler shift involved is almost completely negligible.
Assuming the plane is moving directly away from you (maximal doppler shift) at 858km/h (typical cruise speed), with a wave speed of 'c' - you have a doppler shift of +/- 3.974975 kHz.
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More context: so the plane would be going, perhaps, 1000km/h (or 0.277km/s). Orbital velocity for LEO is 7.8 to 6.9 km/s.
In short, that was what I would call a stupid question.
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LEO is a lot faster than the crusing speed of a 757. The doppler shift involved is almost completely negligible.
Assuming the plane is moving directly away from you (maximal doppler shift) at 858km/h (typical cruise speed), with a wave speed of 'c' - you have a doppler shift of +/- 3.974975 kHz.
That's hardly what I'd call 'completely negligible'. I don't know about cell phones, but the radio telephones I work with are allocated something like 7.5kHz each, so with a doppler shift of 4kHz you'd be stomping on the next channel alongside.
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Sorry, I'm used to VHF/UHF voice operation on 2-meter - a .004 difference isn't all that bad and would still be entirely functional - the service/band that I'm talking about is not channelized.
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Sorry, I'm used to VHF/UHF voice operation on 2-meter - a .004 difference isn't all that bad and would still be entirely functional
That's odd. When someone tries to use my 2m repeater and they're that far off frequency, they are always distorted and usually unintelligible. When you're using a 4kHz deviation system, that means your entire signal is on one side of the passband at the receiver, and unless the receiver is really really sloppy, you're outside the passband for a large part of that signal. You're 27ppm off frequency at 144MHz. That's huge. 5ppm is considered large these days, and 2ppm is standard practice (at least for LMR).
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Hmm. Maybe my transceiver [yaesu.com] is just nice, but i have no reception issues when I'm 5kHz up or down - I obviously don't know how I sound, but I've had conversations before. I guess they just assumed I had a weak signal.
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Re:Best of both worlds (Score:4, Insightful)
This comes from people not smacking them or publicly ridiculing them. When an asshat in first class refuses to get off the phone, yelling "Hey moron! hang up the phone, are you too stupid to understand what the lady just said?" is the proper response instead of just sitting there. If there are no consequences they will never change their behavior.
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And you get a very large man searching your cavities later for causing a panic.
Re: Best of both worlds (Score:5, Funny)
Affordable dentistry at last!
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But then I guess that might force them to actually pay attention to what's going on around them. and (gasp) maybe actually talk to the person next to them.
You might want to consider that the fellow next to you with his BOSE QC3 headset on and plugged into the aircraft audio system is actually better able to pay attention to what is going on because he is better able to hear any announcements that are made. That's especially true when the plane is taking off and engines are at full noise output.
Re:Best of both worlds (Score:5, Insightful)
Now you'll be able to read your kindle on the plane,
Its ebooks that make the no-electronics-below 10000 feet rule intolerable. I can survive for an hour* without music or twitter, but the amount of entertainment that can be extracted from the in-flight magazine, duty free catalogue, in-flight safety card, back of the 'motion discomfort' bag etc. is strictly limited. Especially if its a return flight and you memorised it all on the way out...
*Anybody who talks about '10 minutes during takeoff and landing' is clearly flying from different airports than me...
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So, take along a paper book to read during those times. It sucks, I know, to have to carry extra. But, you know, it's a solved problem... Maybe if you don't want to read two books at once (some people are like that), take along a trade magazine or something.
Reminds me of the jokes about mathematicians, physicists and engineers. Whereby, the mathematicians either say, "a solution exists" (and then go back to bed, or whatever), or reduce the problem to one already solved (by tipping out the bucket of water, f
Keep the phone ban (Score:2)
Flying is annoying enough without someone sitting next to you babbling away on their phone the whole flight.
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Too late, with onboard WiFi, you can already talk to people via Skype or WiFi calling.
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That's because your phone is too close to the speakers. Someone's phone in row 32 much less row 2 won't give the pilots that RF interference to their headsets.
There's 32 rows?
Re:Keep the phone ban (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Keep the phone ban (Score:5, Informative)
Given that aircraft fly around in a veritable EM soup (AM, FM, VHF transmission towers, the spark gaps of an angry god [wikimedia.org], etc.), I would hope that every phone on the plane draining its battery in a coordinated RF scream would be a survivable event. Whether all the chatter raises the noise floor or introduces errors into sensitive measurements is a subtler but more likely issue.
What is outside the airplane is the least of the problems. A large commercial plane has racks of electronic equipment, dozens of radios, weather radar, flight displays, in-flight entertainment systems, power generation and distribution systems, pumps, servos,...etc.
All of those are potential sources of EMI that need to work together as a system. The only reason a cell phone is considered 'risky' is because it un-tested. There is nothing unique about cell phone electronics from an avionics point of view. Similar, and more powerful, systems are already integrated into the airframe.
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Cells phone are not banned because of possible interference with cockpit electronics. Rather because they could cause problems with cell phone towers.
The FCC prohibits cell phones on flights, not the FAA.
Re:Keep the phone ban (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Keep the phone ban (Score:5, Informative)
I like to use this ABM1 - Passive Air Band Monitor [ramseyelectronics.com] when flying. I keep it discreet as I'm sure most flight crews won't understand how it's different from a typical radio receiver. I regularly hear that "bzz bzz bzz" of cell phones with this device. I then ask my girlfriend sitting next to me if she put her phone in airplane mode. If she hadn't and does it the noise usually goes away. If she had her's in airplane mode then I assume it's someone else sitting near me.
Correct so far.
Phones do cause interference in the aircraft frequency bands (at least at short range).
And... you go off the rails.
GSM phones cause interference in audio-frequency circuits because the phone transmits in regular bursts every 4.62 ms (this is why it doesn't affect CDMA, UMTS, etc., only 2G GSM/GPRS/EDGE, because they use TDMA). It turns out audio amplifiers generally tend to serve as decent wide-band AM receivers, so this is very easily picked up as a 217Hz buzz. However, this is all happening on the audio-frequency side, so calling it "interference in the aircraft frequency bands" is just plain wrong -- it will affect practically any unshielded or insufficiently-shielded device (it's only a couple watts or so transmitter, but within a meter or less the inverse-square law says you do need better shielding than a lot of consumer electronics have) with an amplified audio output, including all sorts of radios, and non-radio devices from MP3 players to cassette players.
(for more on this, google or start here [techmind.org])
Fortunately, it's a really easy problem to solve -- just keep your phone out of the cockpit. Thanks to the inverse-square law, it's really only a practical issue at very short range.
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there is no way you will get a connection to a tower at 35000 feet moving at 500mph
Yes you can. If you will recall, this was proven on 9/11/2001.
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They were not at 35000 feet during most of those calls. The speed of the plane is not an issue. It is the height. With a lower height a signal can make in through the windows for more time before dropping. At a higher height the cell towers are too far away or the angle is too sharp and less signal makes it in.
Re:Keep the phone ban (Score:5, Informative)
And they were using cell phones.
Most of the 9/11 calls were from Airfones, not cell phones -
http://imgs.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/cmcginnis/2010/12/16/airfone250x187.jpg [sfgate.com]
Airfones have mostly gone away, but a dozen years ago they were pretty common.
When I notice my fellow passengers playing Candy Crush on their phones you can plainly see the NO SERVICE displayed on the top. This is because they don't know how to go into Airplane Mode so their radios are on, but the phone can't lock to a tower at 35K feet travelling at a ground speed of 500 mph.
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Re:Keep the phone ban (Score:5, Informative)
there is no way you will get a connection to a tower at 35000 feet moving at 500mph
Yes you can. If you will recall, this was proven on 9/11/2001.
The prohibition on using cell phones was also at the request of the wireless carriers. The cellular system was not designed to handle someone using their phone at 35,000 fett and traveling at 500 mph. Your phone "sees" way too many towers and yet the towers have to hand off rapidly since you move out of coverage really fast at that speed. Seven miles up in an airplane is not that far from a tower and the signal is excellent.
It's easier to "just say no" than it is to re-engineer the cellular network to also work with people using their phones in airplanes. Besides, the airlines want you to use their skyphone at their rates so it's in their interest to keep you from using your cell phone instead.
Cheers,
Dave
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This is not an issue as Cellphone tower beam the signal to the earth not up in the sky. I've been in a private jet at 40,000 feet, even with the phone stuck to the window, NO service.
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Could depend on the airplane, altitude, distance to a cell tower (besides altitude), etc. As an example, the building I work in has really spotty cell phone coverage that doesn't seem to be predictable (e.g., I go from no bars to three bars to one bar in a small area next to a glass door entrance with one bar being next to the door and three bars being in just the right place a little back from the doors). I'm sure some RF engineer can explain it but being closer to out of the building doesn't mean more b
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All cellphone towers by design aim the antennas towards the ground, this is how they can have multiple cellphone towers that dont cause issues. When you install it you tip them down to point at the ground that is 2/3 way between that tower and the next tower that way you have overlapping coverage but do not have coverage that causes phasing problems (picket fencing is a major problem to cause data issues) It's how the cellphone network has been designed from day one. you always have an antenna angle that
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If the FCC/FAA were to allow cellphone calls, I am guessing that the Airlines would install their own cellular antenna's on the planes and your phone would lock onto that. I haven't thought through the details but I am sure there is some way the airlines could make a buck on Roaming charges. The cell antenna to ground link would be out of the normal phone range.
They do that with WIFI today.
The phones automatically adjust their transmit power levels according to the distance to the tower and the messaging
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Actually, the speed is very much an issue. Most traditional CDMA/3G phones cannot service objects moving at high speeds (more than 128 Kmph) because their receivers cannot keep track; read up on finger tracking on rake receivers. A call may last for a few seconds (if that) before getting dropped. I understand a few cell towers designed in the past few years can support high speeds, but they are mostly deployed in Japan and are not in common use. 2G systems will almost surely not be able to support high spee
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If you will recall, this was proven on 9/11/2001.
Most of the 9/11 calls were from Airfones, not cell phones -
http://imgs.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/cmcginnis/2010/12/16/airfone250x187.jpg [sfgate.com]
Airfones have mostly gone away, but a dozen years ago they were pretty common.
When I notice my fellow passengers playing Candy Crush on their phones you can plainly see the NO SERVICE displayed on the top. This is because they don't know how to go into Airplane Mode so their radios are on, but the ph
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not true. sporadic short connections can sometimes be made, I've done it in past from foreign-owned airlines that didn't care at over 25,000 feet.
you might also be interested to know the maximum theoretical distance is much farther than that for stationary phone, over 22 miles.
The ban was always bullshit anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The ban was always bullshit anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
I thinks the reason this is being revised is because this rule has inconvenienced people that have the power to do something about it (e.g. US senators). I'm sure airport security screening would be greatly improved if everyone, with no exceptions, had to go through the same type of screening.
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Zero accidents ever (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I think it's more to do with the fact that old PCN & GSM phones gave off quite a bit of interference
Which caused precisely zero plane crashes.
Most phones these days hardly use those spectrums and anyway you've still got keep the phone in flight mode.
Not for any evidence based reason. There are social reasons to not allow cell phones (annoys your fellow passengers when you talk loudly) but thousands of phones are turned on every single day in airplanes for the entire duration of the flight (both intentionally and not) and there has not been a single accident ever as a result. If it were actually a safety risk then the ONLY effective solution would be to ban cell phones entirely from the plane. Based on the fact they haven't done this it is not a risk factor and the FAA knows it.
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... thousands of phones are turned on every single day in airplanes for the entire duration of the flight (both intentionally and not) and there has not been a single accident ever as a result.
It's true. I was part of the unpaid, secret pilot program for this for many, many years.
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To my knowledge, boom boxes, smoking and heavy perfume and nudists haven't caused any plane accidents, and there currently social reasons to ban them as they can be quite annoying and might (in the case of smoking) cause future health problems.
As for cell phone situation, it's a similar situation (and if there may EM-o-phobes that would complain about sitting next to someone with a cell-phone causing them future health problems).
It's just a function of the times what we ban and don't ban. Right now everyon
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When did they ban perfume? Last time I flew was about 2 years ago, and I remember one woman who seemed to have spent the night before marinading in the same nasty ostensibly sunflower-scented old lady perfume that my grandmother wore.
I really, really hate flying...
Re:The ban was always bullshit anyway (Score:4, Funny)
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You're half right, the rules were bullshit but it's because of Air Rage. Some idiot blabbing on their phone next to you throughout the flight a few inches from your head would lead to more air rage incidents. That's why the new rules say that making calls specifically is not allowed, in addition to disabling radio functions.
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Like the war on water, it's largely been about control and government rules abetting private interests. I suppose in this case airlines and the faa and whoever the fuck else stands to make a buck off of this realized it is more profitable to let the monkeys paw their gadgets 100% of the time, instead of the usual 96%.
20 minutes from door close to takeoff, another 5 to 10k feet
10 minutes from 10k feet to landing, another 10 to the terminal
That's about 45 minutes per flight, or a good 15% of even a medium flight. If you're hopping around on short flights over half the flight will be "no electronics", which nowadays means "no books".
If this ruling is applied by the CAA in the UK, I will gain about 50 hours a year of time I can spend reading. That is a massive win.
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If this ruling is applied by the CAA in the UK, I will gain about 50 hours a year of time I can spend reading. That is a massive win.
If you went to bed just ten minutes later each evening, you'd gain more than 60 hours of reading time each year. If you read paper books instead of abandoning that simple technology, you'd still have your 50 hours.
You're incorrect for counting the 10 minutes "to the terminal" after landing. You can turn on your cell phone as soon as you land, at least in the US, and I seem to remember that announcement on non-US flights I've been on. (But that's not an Ebook like I'm restricting myself to using!) You can
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Most electronic devices- how about my RC airplane? (Score:2)
Like we ever turned the things off anyways (Score:2, Funny)
I haven't bothered in years
If my thoughtlessness would doom 150 people and a multimillion dollar jet airplane, the airlines have bigger problems on their hands
I always enjoy hearing my text message notification tone going off when the plane is in the early or final stages of takeoff/landing. The air bitches, I mean, maids, I mean stewardesses must really get pissed, but they're strapped into their chairs at that point.
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Now... (Score:3)
If you'll please pay attention to our safety demonstration and procedures speech...
>pewpewpew
"Safety" demonstration (Score:4, Insightful)
If you'll please pay attention to our safety demonstration and procedures speech...
You mean the one where they explain how to use a seatbelt for everyone who hasn't been in a car in the last 40 years?
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No kidding. People who fly a lot don't listen anyway.
Seatbelts work thusly, popcorn lights on the floor, nearest exit may be behind you (already noted before I sat down), location of the lavs and reminder of the smoke detectors, my stuff under the seat in front of me or stowed in the hatch, air mask may fall (may not inflate, put on mine first before rendering assistance), safety card in fro
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Like the airlines, they would prefer that in the case of an emergency you don't have to sit there and think for too long about what you're supposed to do.
It's not the airlines, it is the FAA. Preflight briefings are mandatory. Here [cornell.edu] is the rule. It is in a section that deals with larger aircraft, so the private pilot who is taking his friends up for a sightseeing tour isn't REQUIRED to follow that reg, but he's a fool if he doesn't do a briefing that includes how to open the door, keep your seatbelt on at all times, don't touch anything, and "that noise you are going to hear when we land (bzzzzzz - stall warning horn) is normal, so don't freak out." If you
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Most cars are "press to release" Most planes are "pull to release" Someone with 40 years experience in cars might be confused by the airplane seatbelt clasp.
Seriously, have you EVER seen anyone have a problem figuring out the seat belt on a plane who is over the age of 5? If you say yes I'm going to call you a liar. I've been flying for decades and NO ONE has any problems figuring this out.
If you are a supposedly competent adult and can't figure out the seat belt on a plane, we don't need you.
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You implied that car belts make one an expert at aviation belts. I pointed out they work in unrelated manners. And yes, I've seen someone ring the call button to get help working the seatbelt. She was so old, she probably calls for assistance for using the toilet as well, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
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If you'll please pay attention to our safety demonstration and procedures speech...
You mean the one where they explain how to use a seatbelt for everyone who hasn't been in a car in the last 40 years?
You'll notice how the majority of seatbelts in the majority of classes do not act like a car seatbelt. In emergencies, people tend to forget that, and rely on their muscle memory of "push button, seatbelt opens", rather than "lift flap, seatbelt opens"
Now some of us use airline seatbelts more than car seatbelts, so maybe in those cases it could be skipped, but that's a pretty small minority.
Who gets a signal during a flight? (Score:2)
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They were very low to ground. That's how they got a signal.
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First, Cell towers are built with directional antennas pointed DOWN towards the ground. They are intended to only cover a small area of real estate and the antennas they use are designed to direct most of the transmit and receive sensitivity to this area. Urban cells are usually fairly small and use very directional antennas pointed down, while rural cell cites can be miles across and use antennas with wider patterns which are pointed out more, but still down. When you are in a commercial airplane, you are
Implementation will be interesting (Score:2)
It's easy to tell someone using a device to turn it off. How do they easily tell if the cellular radio is off? The press release says "no bars displayed". So now the flight attendant has to confirm the absence of one of the smallest icons on the screen?
Even more crazy, this changes the very definition of "airplane mode" from "all radios off" to "cell radio off, but wifi and bluetooth radio okay". Current devices don't even have such a mode! And how many non-techies even have a clear idea of the dist
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Not true, as another poster here on Slashdot corrected me a few months ago.
Apparently, airplane mode turns them all off initially, but you can separately enable them.
So, it turns out, you can actually put a device into airplane mode, and the re-enable wifi and bluetooth. Which to me seems to defeat the purpose, but I'm
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Current devices don't even have such a mode!
Sure they do. I have an old Samsung Moment (ca 2009, running Eclair) that I've was using in no-cell mode as a wifi "tablet" before I broke down and got an actual tablet.
Noise Cancelling Headphones ? (Score:2)
Although there is a lot of talk about e-readers, tablets, phones, etc., I have not seen any mention of noise cancelling headphones. In my experience, passengers (such as me) tend to turn them on right before take off, and not turn them off until after the aircraft lands. Although they are clearly electronic devices, rarely does a flight attendant ask a passenger to turn one of these units off.
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Last October I took a trip to a wedding on an airplane. My oldest on has Aspergers Syndrome and really dislikes loud noises, airplane engines included in that category. We got him a decent set of circumaural NC headphones. When we were getting ready to take off and the flight attendants where checking to make sure everything was off, they specifically asked if they were NC headphones and if they were off.
Boy am I glad. . . (Score:2)
I don't fly anymore. Having to deal with morons every day who think their texts/emails/whatever are more important than having their eyes on the road, or people who randomly walk into moving traffic while talking on their phone is bad enough. Having to sit through a multi-hour flight full of people talking on their phones or bipping and bopping on their tablets would be a nightmare.
What do you know, there is an upside to the TSA!
Still too limiting for short flights. (Score:3)
This limitation and the tedious checkin process and the fact that airports are usually located outside of city centers make bullet trains more attractive to the business traveler than flying for trips up to about 400 miles.
High-speed rail is also very cheap to build. The expected construction cost of $68.4 billion for California's HSR line is much lower than the alternative of building 4,295 new lane-miles of freeway for $119.0 billion plus 115 new airport gates and 4 new runways for an additional $38.6 billion, all just to move the same number of people around. When it's built and the downtown-to-downtown time between San Francisco and Los Angeles is under 3 hours (try that with flying!), people will wonder why anyone would want to fly between those two cities anymore.
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This must be a real kick in the balls for all the folks back in the first days of the iPhone who got arrested because they were using it in "Airplane mode"...
You're not even making any sense. People were arrested for using phones in the least intrusive manner possible? Anyway, "airplane mode" is still useful. Probably should be called "non-emission mode" or something though. Like if your at a boring lecture and want to play "wild, wild weasels" during.
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Anyway, "airplane mode" is still useful. Probably should be called "non-emission mode" or something though.
The only non-emission mode for a cellphone is "battery removed". Otherwise, the CPU is still running and still using square-wave clock signals and still emitting something. Even if it just wakes up once a second to check the "on/off" button to see if it should turn all the way back on.
"Airplane mode" is "radios off", because (most) radios have deliberate oscillators in their receive section that can easily leak and act like transmitters, and cell/wifi/bt are all deliberate transmitters to start with.
Yes,
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The only non-emission mode for a cellphone is "battery removed"...
OMG. I know. Don't care. Not really relevant. Go play kick ball or whatever you do...
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Re:Differnent from current? (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly does this differ from the policies from now? Airplane-mode only, check. Turned off during take-off and landing, check.
Uncheck. On for take-off and landings, except for special cases when visibility is low and the low visibility navigation systems are not PED certified.
Wi-fi allowed (if you want to pay the airline $20 for a couple hours' access), check.
Uncheck. Wi-fi and bluetooth allowed, with no requirement to pay the airline. I figure it will be interesting to run an open NAP and see how much data can be sniffed from devices trying to get a wi-fi connection. Or to spoof a lot of large online services to get login credentials. Fun.
Where's the big change?
Re:Different from current? (Score:2)
How exactly does this differ from the policies from now? Airplane-mode only, check. Turned off during take-off and landing, check.
Uncheck. On for take-off and landings, except for special cases when visibility is low and the low visibility navigation systems are not PED certified.
6. Properly stow heavier devices under seats or in the overhead bins during takeoff and landing. These items could impede evacuation of an aircraft or may injure you or someone else in the event of turbulence or an accident. My bad, I confused "stow" with "turn off." Because having it turned on does so much good if it's stowed.
Wi-fi allowed (if you want to pay the airline $20 for a couple hours' access), check.
Uncheck. Wi-fi and bluetooth allowed, with no requirement to pay the airline. I figure it will be interesting to run an open NAP and see how much data can be sniffed from devices trying to get a wi-fi connection. Or to spoof a lot of large online services to get login credentials. Fun.
This is no change. There was never a prohibition against using wi-fi or bluetooth. I've flown several airline which offer w-fi during flights in the past decade, usually with a hefty
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6. Properly stow heavier devices under seats or in the overhead bins during takeoff and landing. These items could impede evacuation of an aircraft or may injure you or someone else in the event of turbulence or an accident. My bad, I confused "stow" with "turn off." Because having it turned on does so much good if it's stowed.
"Heavier devices". The MP3 player "stowed" in my pocket does me a considerable amount of good. The noise cancelling headphones do me an even greater amount of good when stowed on my head in the 'on' position.
This is no change. There was never a prohibition against using wi-fi or bluetooth.
You are wrong.
I've flown several airline which offer w-fi during flights in the past decade, usually with a hefty fee.
This is a very specific exception to the rule against radio transmitters on board an aircraft. Except for the relatively recent addition of on-board wi-fi services, wi-fi and bluetooth have been prohibited while in flight.
You can also continue to use short-range Bluetooth accessories, like wireless keyboards.
The airline you fly has been letting you bend the rules. The o