Comments on: ATA Airlines detains passenger for using iPhone in 'airplane mode'

There may be an airplane mode switch on your mobile phone, but don't assume your airline cares whether that switch is on or off.

[MyRightEye]

Ron Paul will help deal with this crap

Google Ron Paul.

[Galaxy5]

White supremacists love Ron Paul!

Ron Paul: The crazy patriot movement conservative with
endorsements from noted white supremacists Stormfront and
David Duke!

Go Ron Paul! (Rolls Eyes)

[LasVegasLarry]

Silly, but the airline is right

If you look in the sky, you'll see lawyers flying in lazy circles over this guy...ah the smell of deep pockets...

This is a very silly argument to get in with a flight attendant, but I believe the law about following an airline employee's (with the Captain's authority) orders takes precedence. Fact is, until some legislation is passed (Passenger Bill of Rights), you give up many rights when you walk onto a commercial flight.

[Pete Bardo]

Maybe the airline is right

But the attendant seems to have been wrong. Yes, it's silly and fruitless to argue with the attendant, but what other recourse do we have when encountering ignorance in an undeserved position of authority?

In defense of freedom it is not only your right but your duty to question authority, even though it may land you in jail.

[starcannon]

No, the airline is wrong

Further, the concept of not questioning authority figures when you know they are wrong, misinformed, ignorant, or in our presidents case... mentally deficient, that is wrong as well. Also wrong is those that question authority with no purpose other than just to create conflict from nothing.
Freedom is a responsibility, of which questioning authority when appropriate is a part.
Feel free to accept the meager amount of porridge in your bowl, I for one will be the first in line to say "please sir, a bit more".

[user1027]

ATA is ignorant

I'm a pilot and an electrical engineer; I say the ban on cell phones is unnecessarily conservative.

The only possible equipment that could be remotely effected is the glide slope portion of the ILS receiver, since that is in a frequency band close to what the oldest analog cell phones used, but even then, it would have a low chance of interference. Most new cell phones use a completely different band and lower power.

The ILS is only effective below about 4000 feet, so cell phones could be permitted above 10,000 feet. I still think they should be banned for the simple reason that people that blab on them can't keep their voices low and such people are worse then terrorists.

As for "airplane mode" - well in that case, the device is no longer even a cell phone since the transciever is disabled, so there should be NO prohibition against iPhones in "airplane mode".

[Jase415]

Let ATA continue to ban airplane mode devices...

...as long as they let potential passengers know about the policy explicitly and up-front. I'll gladly pay a bit more to some other airline that will let me watch videos on my iPhone in an effort to take my mind off the cramped conditions in coach.

[TaintDeli]

Another point

I think it may be possible that the ban on phones in planes may have more to do with the wireless carriers. A friend of mine, who has a pilot's license, once used his cell phone while flying solo years ago. He immediately received a call from his wireless carrier asking "*** did you do?" His phone pinged 150 towers during that one short call. I suppose if all passengers on all commercial flights were allowed to make calls while in the air it would bring the nation's cell networks to their knees.

[indigonetworks]

Here's what they/you/everyone missed

Almost EVERY passenger using a notebook with a built-in wireless card on the plane failed to disable WiFi because fewer than half of all notebook owners know how to enable and disable their built-in card.

50 WiFi devices vs. 1 cell phone? Wrong battle FAA.

[user1027]

Re: WiFi

Exactly - very little chance of interference. Those Wifi cards are in the 2 GHz band (far away from any nav. band) and are low power.

[rgenius]

Don't forget built in bluetooth

Few laptop users not only fail to disable wifi (and filesharing btw
/makes for entertaining surfing on flight) but also fail to disable
bluetooth on newer pc laptops. I find a larger percentage of Apple
users tend to have their laptops in a flight mode so perhaps they
are more educated in what to do or it is easier but only half those
users disable these oft overlooked services. It just shows what a
crock these retro laws have become...

[proadventurer]

I used my iphone on ATA Hilo-Oakland Sept. 21st

I even showed a flight attendant my phone not 3 weeks ago. Flying from Hilo to Oakland, no one cared.

I don't think this is an ATA issue, but rather a stupid employee issue.

[alawaiblowfish]

Hilo is the reason for your awesome flight

the reason you probably got better treatment than the
aformentioned gentleman, was because you flew out of hilo.
People on Oahu have, in general, have become very "high
makamaka" (snooty) and rude. The real aloha spirit, unfortunatly,
can only be found on the other islands (sans maui).

[planetboom]

iPhone and iPod Touch

Makes we wonder what happens when the ignorant attendant will
confuse an iPod touch for an iPhone. Should make for a fun
discussion.

[jodoyle]

Wait until they can find a way to make a $....

The airlines don't want you using the wireless features of your cellphone/laptops because of "safety" issues. Of course, remember when Lufthansa and Boeing created the joint venture to sell internet access on their planes? I paid $19.95 for internet access when I traveled across the Atlantic. Must have been all of all the lead lining they placed in their planes...

[vinnie mirchandani]

try using GPS on planes

wide range of experiences from my various flights - if I get a window I till tether my GPS chip to my laptop and watch progress, altitude etc on MS Streets and Trips. On ground the chip goes into a bluetooth tramsitter and talks to navigation sw on my PDA.

Southwest has no problems. I asked a pilot and he said they tried 20 different GPS gadgets and decided they caused no interference. Couple of them have kiddded with me and said can we use yours - it's more accurate than the one in the cockpit -)

Alaska and others will not allow it - airline magazine specifically bans them.

Delta magazine is silent and most flights on it no one has bothered me. But one flight attendant brought her fat, red, ops manual and showed me fine print. "Tethered" GPS units not allowed. If I had a standalone Garmin it would be ok. As I got off the flight, the pilot scolded me. When I told him Southwest allowed it, he said he would report SW to the FAA. I was afraid to tell him his own Delta pilot colleagues had on other flights allowed it.

FAA says it has no jurisdication on the matter - it's individual airline decision.

In the end the pilot is the ship of the captain, and I will respect his decision, especially if fellow passengers are nervous about a gadget, but wish the airline industry had clearer guidelines about phones, MP3, GPS...

[Travis Ernst]

RE:GPS

Correct. GPS should be allowed. We never had problems with NWA
on the Garmin 396 unit we used in our airplane (color screen). It
can also be hooked up to a computer to install maps for the
regions you will be in to save memory.

It just goes to show you the IQ of some of the employees. I fly with
an avaitors watch on usually (pilots would spot it). They even make
one with GPS built in for boaters.

[Lee in San Diego]

Any incidents?

I am sure that there has been plenty of times that passengers have
surreptitiously operated a cell phone, PDA, or other small electronic
devices. So how many airplane crashes have been attributed the
use of personal electronic devices? How many airplanes got lost
because the iPod threw off the navigation.

[californiaromeo]

Europe

In Europe, most of the airlines now incorporate "is you are using a
cellphone please switch it into airline mode or switch it off once
the doors have closed" into their safety talk.

[Bill_I]

electronics on airplanes

For many years there has been a lot of confusion about radios, walkman and discman player usage while in flight. There is a factual reason for this, as an FM radio has a small local oscillator for superhet operation. This is located 10.7 MHz above the received station frequency and has a very small possibility of interfering with aircraft radio communications, thus the ban. All other electronic devices have zero risk, but nobody knows this.

[Travis Ernst]

Re: broadcast FM radio

The radios are RECIEVE ONLY. They cannot transmit. it cannot
cause issues with the 115-135 bands the airlines use.

I could legally turn on my ICOM hand held (FAA radio, recieve
only) in an airplane. The airlines wil tell you diffrently trust me.

If I brought on the transmitter (A1 model) that is another story.
You cannot TRANSMIT from the aircraft. It is the transmission
that may cause potential problems, how miniscule of a
possibility that poses.

[whclevelandjr]

I agree

I believe most radios need to "down convert" to a common I.F.
(around 50Mhz) to take advantage of the off-the-shelf
demodulator chipsets available.

I don't think it's has as much to do with the frequency as it does
with the power level of the I.F.. Newer radios don't need to
produce as intense intermediate frequency signal as the older
generation radio did.

Of course, it has been a while since I played with radio theory...
(and it probably shows)

[Phil-IT]

True, but again...

This is true.
But again, I belive you do have to listen to the flight attendants, even if they are wrong...

[Lee in San Diego]

Any crashes? Any lost planes?

Have any airplanes crashed, had a close call, or got lost because a
passenger was using a cell phone, PDA, iPod, or laptop?

[bob donut]

Technically the passenger is right, but...

The passenger is right in that his cell phone is safe in "airline mode". At the same time, I don't trust my fellow passengers to be smart enough to know how to put their cell phones into airline modes, nor do I expect even the smart ones to remember to do so in every case.

So it's probably better to just have a blanket ban on cell phones, even if they have non-interference mode.

[Lee in San Diego]

No airplanes have ever crashed due to use of such devices

If any airplanes have crashed, or even had some difficulty, from
the passenger use of cell phones, PDAs, or iPod/Zunes/RIOs
please point us to the FAA report.

I am going out on a limb and say that there is no electronic
interference problem from such devices, if their is prove it. The
problem would be from the dufus playing loud music through
speakers, ratchet jawing on the cell phone, watching porn where
the kid sitting next you can see it, or otherwise being obnoxious
with the use of the device. There may also be a part where the
airlines want to sell you calls from installed cell phones or rent
you headphones for installed entertainment systems.

OTHERWISE, all a terrorist would need to do is get on an airplane
and then turn on his Nokia N95 to crash the plane.

If there really was a problem we could not be allowed to bring
such devices into the cabin.

If the airlines don't want us using such things while flying then
they should have the balls to say it is their policy and if you
don't like fly on another channel. Don't hide behind the skirts of
the FAA and FCC

[Darryl Snortberry]

Mythbusters

Yeah I remember this myth being debunked on an episode of Mythbusters.

[jcpole]

Actually...

There was an incident where a cellular telephone was blamed for impacting the avionics of a commercial airliner in flight, and causing that aircraft to come close to crashing. It happened in Brazil a few years ago.

I'm a pilot, and the only "bleedover" I have ever encountered was with Nextel phones. When a Nextel phone is active, it is not uncommon to hear a series of fast clicking noises over the comm radios, but they do the exact same thing to lots of other communications devices that aren't mounted in aircraft.

Having a legitimate professional concern, I asked a staffer at the FCC exactly why the ban on cell phone use was in place, and her response was that a cellular telephone used on the ground is usually capable of reaching only 3 to 5 cell towers due to terrestrial obstructions, buildings, etc. In an airliner at 25,000 feet, a cellular telephone could potentially reach so many carrier towers that it could impact system availability for other subscribers.

As far as the incident in Brazil, there was obviously not an FAA/NTSB report on the incident, but I do recall reading a translation of the final report, which stated that a passenger stored her cellular telephone in her briefcase without turning it off, and that the autopilot of the airliner put the plane into an uncommanded dive which only ended when the flight crew turned off the autopilot. Apparently, they turned the autopilot back on for some strange reason (the moral of THAT story is that you should NEVER get on a plane with a Brazilian flight crew, but that is another discussion), and they were rewarded with another uncommanded dive, which was once again interrupted by turning off the autopilot.

I believe the claim that the cell phone was responsible is absolutely preposterous. More likely, the Brazilian airliner manufacturing industry didn't want delays in certification of their airliners in the USA, so they made up a little fib about the cause of the incident. Very likely, there was an autopilot or pitot-static failure, which was manifested by the autopilot thinking the plane was too high. Thus the drastic dive. And again, how the autopilot placed the aircraft into what was essentially an unusual attitude is yet another discussion.

I have flown passengers that inadvertently left their cell phones on, and I have certainly never lost control of the aircraft as a result. It just isn't plausible.

Most aircraft avionics (comm radios, nav radios, VORs, DME, ILS/Localizer, etc) operate just above the FM band (109.0000 - 137.0000), so there is VERY little likelihood that an 800MHz/900MHz cellular telephone will cause significant interference.

The FCC regulation is not about aircraft safety - it's about cellular telephone providers with massively over-subscribed networks.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft for more information...

[w_jackson]

it's not the FAA, it's the FCC

The original issue was with AMPS phones (analog) that when operating in the air would confuse the older cell networks since when in the air the phone could come on the network from several towers at once. There was a documented case in (I think) atlanta early on where a couple of people in a private plane took down a cell network. I don't think thatthis is an issue any more with the digital networks.

There has never, that I have heard of, been a documented case where a phone has interfered with an airplane. However, since the most critical times for a flight from the standpoint of interference are takeoff and landing, I can see their point on all electronic devices. However, if devices are certified (as all consumer elctronic devices area) to not interfere with a radio or television set in the same room, that has to be a pretty lousy design on the airplane to be subject to interference.

[doctorbonkers]

IF Cell Phones are such a threat, what about 9/11?

If cellphones will cause such catastrophic damage to airplane instrumentation, how come the use of cell phones on 9/11 did not bring the planes down or at least off target? I smell something fishy about this FAA ban. There have been plenty of times people next to me on planes have left their cell phones on or operated I-pods on take off and NOTHING happened.

[mattumanu]

why didn't the guy just say it's an iPod touch?

Eh? Eh? Eh?

[DaisyD.]

Eh? Eh? Eh?

'Cause he was honest? It makes a difference at the end of the
day (and the beginning too).

[Xenu7-214951314497503184010868]

Flight Attendants Have Low IQs

You're dealing with people who are basically restaurant waitresses on a flying bus. What do you expect? Intelligence? Common sense?

Next time you're in a restaurant getting lousy service, ask yourself: "If I was stuck in this restaurant for 3 to 4 hours, would I want them waiting on me?" Now imagine putting your life in their hands, or God forbid, that they worked for TSA.

[gaijingeisha]

Flight attendants

There is no reason to make disparaging comments about the intelligence of flight attendants. These very people go through rigorous training on dealing with evacuating passengers in an emergency and your very life may depend on them doing their jobs. Many of them lose their lives every year.

[mcrain00]

Your an Idiot

Your an Idiot. Flight Attendants are simply doing their job which is enforcing Federal Law! If you had a brain, you'd realize that. Flight Attendants nor TSA Agents would not be doing their jobs if they did not enforce Federal Aviation Regulations. It's called "Law and Order". Want something else? Go live on a desert island!

[dcmosqueda]

Use my iPhone in flight all the time

I have watched dozens of movies on my iPhone while flying on AirTran, United, etc... What you have here is an ignorant stewardess (she doesn't deserve the flight attendant nomenclature) who should be fired. As Marshall Field said about the customer: "The lady's always right." Clearly the airplane mode disables the radios in the iPhone and thus any potential for interference with flight systems.

[Soulwolf]

Stupid people with authority are always a problem.

Do they train attendants at all any more. Nothing worse than trying to explain something technical to a waitress on a power trip. I wonder if she could distinguish an improvised transmitter from an electric tooth brush?

[Darryl Snortberry]

Re: Stupid People with authority

I was about to say the same. Unfortunately those same types run the government and are placed there by a stupid people majority. The sad thing is these types get people killed. With all that commotion some air marshal may have taken him out.

[starcannon]

exactly

well stated.

[carol froisy]

Waitress

Next time you are in a resturant and it starts fire, let's see the "waitress" pull your burning back side out. It is safety first, customer service second. And I mean first and second.

Signed former ATA flight attendant

[joeonsunset]

What's silly is believing in made-up laws

What law is that, may I ask? The one you mention about following the captain's orders and giving up your rights? Can you find it? Cite it?

The law is that it's illegal to intimidate or assault the airplane crew in order to interfere with their duties. 49 U.S.C. § 46504.

[pbuckner]

Which law? This one...

Title 14 91.21, covering portable electronic devices. Basically,
you're not allowed to use ANY devices except voice recorders,
electric razors, hearing aids and pacemakers (...nice to know you
don't have to turn off that pacemaker...).

The exception is only if the "the operator of the aircraft has
determined..." that there is no interference.

When you're on the plane, it's generally up to the pilot: if your
device makes him nervous, you either don't use it, or you don't
fly with him/her.

That being said, I agree with early comment that we need a well
defined, commonly-understood "airplane mode", so pilots can
feel comfortable.