Research: Mobile Phones Disrupt Aircraft 669
threeturn writes "Another contribution to the ever-popular "mobiles on planes" topic. Every time this is discussed on /. lots of people say "there is no danger - its just the airlines trying to make a buck on their skyphones". Well, now the UK Civil Aviation Authority has done some research which shows mobiles on planes do disrupt safety systems and interfere with compass readings and other navigation equipment. Also reported by the BBC. So do us all a favour and switch your mobiles off next time you fly."
I think this is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think this is good (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, it's generally not an indicator of common sense to compromise the very safety systems that are keeping you alive whilst you are being propelled at mach ~0.78 at 30,000' MSL...but, that's why common sense isn't all that common!
Re:I think this is good (Score:5, Interesting)
I say, install automatic detection systems for wireless devices, identify the location of the phone and put it on the screen for all passengers to see. Let them then decide what to do about it - I think after a few blanket parties the message will get around!
Re:I think this is good (Score:5, Funny)
"yeah, we just landed... I think I'll grab a burger and be there in an hour... yada yada yada..."
They make calls about free NY Times registration?Re:I think this is good (Score:4, Insightful)
i've heard a very large number of these touchdown calls (i fly at least twice a week) and not a single one has yet been urgent enough to warrant the abuse of everyone in the vicinity.
Re:I think this is good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think this is good (Score:5, Funny)
So next time the guy next to you makes a phonecall, show him you can do better and start masturbating. If he counters by screaming profanities at you, pick your nose.
Better idea...! (Score:4, Funny)
Better yet, pick his nose. That will be *sure* to make an impression he won't forget...!
Re:I think this is good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I think this is good (Score:5, Insightful)
I have noticed that people tend to talk much louder on their phones than they normally talk. This is what ticks me off - when I am in a quiet setting like maybe a restauraunt and then someone uses their at-a-soccer-game voice.
This is because their phone/service sucks. On many phones if you do not yell no one can hear you (and even then it is sometimes problematic. This was the case with my previous Samsung/Sprint combination. With my nokia 3590 and at&t using gsm I can speak with a normal voice even with the phone slightly away from my face (like while taking down a number) and the other person and I have no problem hearing each other.
I think it is silly when cell phones do not have a higher range for their volume controls, since this is the cheapest thing to change and dramatically changes the customer experience w/r/t how the reception is perceived (if you can turn it way up and hear, then you will think you have ok service as long as you aren't cut off). Too bad everyone can't have phones designed by Spinal Tap! :)
Re:I think this is good (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I think this is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think this is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think this is good (Score:3, Insightful)
I would rather see them not allow anything electronic...that way, they woludn't have to worry about it. BUT, this would be controlled by the people at baggage claim, which everyone mostly consists of idiots. They could
Re:I think this is good (Score:4, Insightful)
I think they are more concerned with the potential of a sustained disruption caused by a pool of 300 passengers affecting the performance of the compass and safety systems throughout the flight.
In your scenario you'd expect a burst, which might temporarily disrupt performance but would not (I'm assuming here) have a sustained effect.
Re:I think this is good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think this is good (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think this is good (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I think this is good (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, I was mostly joking. I have read the actual research (well, I am reading through it now) and it seems that this is another example of bad science turning out an irresponsible academic paper with skewed results which are then sensationalized by "journalists" who don't even read the paper they are reporting on (but write at length out of their ass). Pretty much SOP.
What *should* have been the headline was "Researchers find it is impossible to affect airplanes with cell phones" though even that is kind of innacurate. They found that if you could get a device to transmit continuously on cell phone frequencies at the maximum power that a cell phone might be known to operate at and then put that device 30cm from the equipment in a cockpit there could be minor disruptions in instrumentation. Maybe someone who is more of a radio geek than I am could come up with a much more nefarious and effective device (effective from a longer range, for instance), but a cell phone does not fit the criteria of the device they used to disrupt service.
As an occasional airline passenger (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:As an occasional airline passenger (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Mobile networks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mobile networks (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Mobile networks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:As an occasional airline passenger (Score:4, Informative)
They are immune as well.
At least to a phone you can get on the plane (one that fits in your pocket).
The British Civil Aviation authority tested with a transmitter that was constantly transmitting at 5 watts. That is the maximum allowed power of a car phone (anyone seen a GSM car phone?). And they barely got some interference in some parts of the aircraft. If they would have tested with real mobile power and with real transmission (which is not contiguous) they would have been unable to show interference even with pre-1989 avionics.
Re:As an occasional airline passenger (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure if this really matters or not.... I'm asking.
Re:As an occasional airline passenger (Score:5, Insightful)
Opting out (Score:4, Funny)
Know the penalty for actually answering it?
Just curious, this is a question (not a statement)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Opting out (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be interesting to find out. In the US, with the advent of Air Marshals, even the smallest infractions are now enforced (a man was tackled and arrested by the Air Marshals for *wanting* to go to the bathroom while the seat belt sign was on. He had asked the flight attendant repeatedly to let him go, but never actually went...) The Article, which no one reads, talks about a man being sentenced to 12 months in prison in the UK for having his cell phone on (and not using it) during a flight.
I am annoyed to find out, however, that the whole thing is bogus. Once again "journalists" (what passes for them these days) misreport findings in an uncited study that was flawed in the first place. The study *did not* find that cell phones disrupt flights. They did not even use cell phones for their tests. So the science behind this simply is not there.
Re:As an occasional airline passenger (Score:5, Informative)
I'd expect to see newer planes kitted out in such a fashion though. What better way to ensure aircraft sales than to say "yup, business class passengers can still use WiFi and their mobiles... on our new jets..."
Upgrades do need to happen, although... (Score:5, Insightful)
We bail 'em out, they waste it, we'll just bail 'em out again.
Re:As an occasional airline passenger (Score:3, Funny)
Great, so you can pay extra to spend six hours next to someone yelling into their phone:
Yeah, Jack? Listen. About those latest sales figures - can you CC them to me ASAP? Oh, and FYI, the head honcho up in corporate really wants to grow this business, so I'd like you to get up to speed on the ISO9002 requirements for the Peterson accou - dammit, Frank, how many times do I have to tell you, we don't sell PROD
Re:As an occasional airline passenger (Score:5, Informative)
Not true. There can commonly be as little as1000' separation with a combined horizontal velocity of 1400mph or higher.
Flight levels above 18,000' alternate between easterly directions on the odd-thousands and westerly directions on the even-thousands. The altitudes are determined by pressure altitude and monitored carefully by radar. The altimeters are precision instruments and frequently calibrated.
So, a 767 flying at 250 degrees at flight level 280 (28,000 ft) can meet a 757 flying at 70 degrees at flight level 270 (1000 feet below) along a published airway, and it would not be unusual circumstances. ATC (and their onboard collision detection system) would keep them aware of each other.
Re:As an occasional airline passenger (Score:3, Informative)
Additionally, once you get up really high (~32000, maybe 36000), they start seprating by 2000 or 3000 ft.
Re:As an occasional airline passenger (Score:3, Funny)
And if get very much above those sort of altitudes, chances are that you're much more maneuverable than a typical airliner, and usually armed, so if you can't avoid the collision you could just should at the risk until it goes away.
Re:As an occasional airline passenger (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately they spend a substantial amount of their money on Congresscritters. Probably more than they would spend on retrofitting, but the point for them is not to have to listen to you ;).
How much is your bribery budget? Feed a Congresscritter today! :)
Re:As an occasional airline passenger (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll second that.
Having read the article, there are some interesting points. First off they aren't alleging that using your cellphone will make the plane crash, but rather that it might cause some sort of distracting noise in the crews headsets and at worst could conceivably cause a false alarm on one of their warning lights. Sounds a little iffy to me, but ok, better safe than sorry on a plane... then I read on.
Turns out it doesn't matter on new jets - only ones certified pre-'89. So why don't they let people use their mobiles on the newer planes where it's not an issue? Back to the old 'conspiracy theories' on that one. Controllers like control. And the high prices on the sky phones can't hurt either.
Plus, as you kind of hinted at, if a cellphone can really cause even minor systems disruption on a pre-'89 jet, just imagine what someone that was seriously trying to cause a problem could do. It's absurd. If those jets really do have systems that can be so easily disrupted, they should be grounded until they're fixed. So either way, something doesn't add up here, either they're lying (or maybe just stretching the truth very far and very consciously) or they're not even trying to do their job, take your pick.
In an age when we know there are people trying to bring jetliners down, it's absolutely absurd to be flying jetliners that are so poorly insulated against EM interference that a mobile phone is a threat to them. Period.
Re:As an occasional airline passenger (Score:3, Interesting)
They're not. They fall under the category of "authorized radio station". You need a license to operate a plane's radio.
Cell phone towers are the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cell phone towers are the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Quite a few, if the signal was strong enough to travel 30,000 feet. That's 10,000 yards. Which in (British at least - don't know about US) miles, is about 5.5 miles. This might work along the ground, but straight up in the air???
I worked for a while almost at the top of the new HSBC building in London's Docklands. It's only a little shorter than Canada Tower (Britain's tallest building), but above about the 40th floor, you lose your phone signal and can only intermittently make calls.
Therefore, I think that the danger comes not from communicating with cells, but the phones continually searching for cells (which does involve transmission I believe). They do this every few seconds. An unscientific way of showing this is when you are out of range, the battery life of phones left on standby reduces dramatically, due to all the extra transmissions.
Re:Cell phone towers are the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
No problems getting reception up to 3000 ft, but you get LOTS of extra transmissions switching from tower to tower.
Re:Cell phone towers are the problem (Score:5, Informative)
You're right, cell phones were never designed to work at that altitude with so many towers in sight. Three towers is basically the magic number (the least number of points to make a cell). Also, the cell phones were designed for day-to-day activity, such as walking or driving around. The sheer number of cells within the phone's sight in a plane coupled with the speed at which you are traveling makes it pretty difficult for the phone to behave.
This has no bearing on whether or not it's OK for a phone to operate on a plane. Shit, the old planes may not have shielding for transmissions of that frequency (old ones at least), but I've been asked to put a four-function calculator away during the middle of the flight at cruising altitude... they just don't want to worry about technical problems like that I guess.
Re:Cell phone towers are the problem (Score:3, Informative)
First of all, the phone signal is easily strong enough to reach hundreds of kilometers from high altitude. Cell phones transmit several hundred milliwatts of power. I once used a 100 mW ham radio mountaintop-to-mountaintop at a distance of 175 miles. Since 30,000 feet is onloy 6 miles, signal strength per se is not going to keep your cell phone from working.
Then there is the issue of antennae. The cell system antennas are oriented
Re:Cell phone towers are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure the Airlines couldn't care less that their passengers are screwing up the Telco systems - they are far more concerned about the effect on their planes!
Hence the biggest problem is the interference with the avionics, NOT the telco problems it creates!
Re:Cell phone towers are the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
not many at all.
First Cell site antenna array's are high gain and therefore squeeze the signal to the horizon, second they tilt the antennas downward to limit the cell sites coverage in regards to adjacent cell sites.
It amazes me how many times this comes up on cellphone doscussions and how suprising it is to find how many people have no clue as to the basics of how a cellsite operates.
Re:Cell phone towers are the problem (Score:5, Informative)
That only makes the problem worse.
Consider: You are at 30000 feet, and your phone is on. Its listening for a control channel, and finds one. It does a registration.
Now, several factors are reducing the signal strength of the control channel to the phone: distance, the gain pattern of the site's antenna, and the fact the phone is in a big metal box with small holes in it. So the phone will have a very low RSSI (received signal strength indicator), and will put out maximum power to reach the site.
Now, because the altitude, the angle the signal comes in at and the distance are not going to be very much different for many cellsites - each is going to receive the phone about equally well. This actually tends to EXPAND the range of sites affected - the sites under the plane suffer from the gain pattern of the signal and the emission pattern from the plane (most of your signal is going out horizontally from the windows, modulo knife edge scattering), but get a boost from proximity. The sites far from the plane lose signal due to distance, but now the signal is coming from a lower angle and is in the higher gain portion of the antenna pattern.
Now, cell sites are laid out in a pattern - usually in most urban areas it is a hexagonal pattern, with adjacent cells using different frequencies and DCC (digital color code - basically a number that helps the phone tell the difference between sites). So there WILL be several sites that will match the frequency and DCC the phone is using.
Now, for CDMA systems ALL those sites have to swap data about the signal they are receiving (this is to implement "soft handoff" where the phone gradually changes which site it uses - for a time the phone is actually using 2 sites at once.) This GREATLY increases the data bandwidth used between sites.
For GSM it's a little different - but the upshot is you are STILL confusing the sites and forcing them to talk to each other over the landline connections.
Meanwhile, here is your phone blasting out bursts of RF at maximum power to try to register to the cell site it hears - only to have to register AGAIN a few seconds later because it has moved out of range.
So, your battery will go flat very quickly (the way these new phones keep battery life up is by not being on all the time - they only listen during their assigned time slot, normally. However, when the phone detects that is has changed sites, it must re-register and listen to ALL time slots until it gets one assigned.)
Also, you are tying up resources in the cell system.
Lastly, you are pumping out a fair amount of RF power inside this big metal box full of wires. What is another term for "wire" - ANTENNA. Each of the wires in that plane is detecting some of your radio's signal, and any non-linear element (corrosion, a semiconductor, etc.) can act as a detector to convert the RF into DC. (Think about the old style crystal radios, or the foxhole razor blade radio).
When you do EMI complience checks, you will be amazed at what can act as a receiver and make things go screwy. All sorts of things that you might think "this cannot interfere - it's gigahertz away!" start interfering.
Re:Cell phone towers are the problem (Score:4, Funny)
The general public doesn't study up on how cell towers work?!?! This is an outrage, somebody call James Earl Jones the verizon wireless guy!
Re:Cell phone towers are the problem (Score:3, Informative)
No. They are the same thing. In Britain, what you call a cell phone, is called a mobile phone. The CAA mean cell-phones not walk-around-the-house style things.
Odd (Score:3, Interesting)
Why go back and forth on the issue?
Note: Of course I don't know all of the facts on the subject so I could be missing something (different plane models are affected differently, etc.)
Even worse... (Score:5, Funny)
A little too late here (Score:5, Informative)
A text message sent to a passenger is one theory for a crash that happened last Friday.
News link [nzherald.co.nz]
I'm sure I read somewhere though that an airline was going to use wireless for flight attentents.
802.11[a|b|g]? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:802.11[a|b|g]? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:802.11[a|b|g]? (Score:5, Informative)
do you even get reception? (Score:5, Interesting)
would one even get reception up there? not only up there - but in there (metal cylinder)?
Re:do you even get reception? (Score:5, Informative)
Longer term solution (Score:5, Informative)
My guess is aircraft will need better shielded systems.
Re:Longer term solution (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was working on wireless tech, and had to sit on industry consortium meetings on various initiatives for this type of stuff. One idea that was being passed around was to have an access point on the aircraft that would broadcast a 'forbidden' command to all the wireless devices which would tell them to play nice. iow - the plane would be a 'forbidden zone' where the device would know that it was not allowed to bro
Full report here (Score:5, Informative)
From the executive summary:
In October 2002, a set of avionic equipment was tested under controlled conditions in a test chamber for susceptibility to cellphone interference. General aviation avionic equipment, representative of earlier analogue and digital technologies, was used. The equipment, comprising a VHF communication transceiver, a VOR/ILS navigation receiver and associated indicators, together with a gyro-stabilised remote reading compass system, was assembled to create an integrated system.
The tests covered the cellphone transmission frequencies of 412 (Tetra), 940 (GSM) and 1719MHz, including simultaneous exposure to 940 and 1719MHz. The applied interference field strengths were up to 50 volts/metre for a single frequency, and 35 volts/metre for dual frequencies.
The following anomalies were seen at interference levels above 30 volts/metre, a level that can be produced by a cellphone operating at maximum power and located 30cms from the victim equipment or its wiring harness.
snip
I am wondering: how realistic is a test which assumes that the phone will be 30cm from the equipment?
Re:Full report here (Score:5, Insightful)
ok now how about running the same test with REALISTIC amplitudes... no cellphone on this planet can generate 50V per Meter.
Cripes, my ham gear transmitting at 25 watts is only at 11 volts per meter as measured by a field strength meter...
Sheesh I might as well report that cellphones make cars unsafe because when I put the car's computer in my microwave oven and set it for 10 minutes the electronics fry out..
Call me when they perform a real test.
This is probably about right... (Score:3, Interesting)
Has anyone ever left their phone on anyway and checked their signal strength at 35,000 feet?
Damn! It doesn't say 'Ashcroft' (Score:5, Funny)
Foil Hat (Score:5, Funny)
Whether or not it's a safety issue... (Score:4, Insightful)
The cell network can, however, detect this condition, and report the number of a phone that's on use in the air (by the sheer number of sites it talks to). The FCC has issued fines before to people who have used their cellphones inflight. Want a fine? Then turn yours on.
They are not meant to work on planes anyway (Score:3, Informative)
Because of the high dopplar shifts. They are only meant to work when the base station and mobile are moving less than 100 KPH relative to each other. (I think it is higher for GSM, it is meant to operate on high speeed european trains) I was amazed that people on one of the Sept. 11th hijacked planes were able to even use their phones. Your call would also be handing off from one base station to another and a very high rate.
Need for standards (Score:3, Insightful)
There are already compatibility problems between cell phones and cordless phones (at least, I and others I know can't use both simultaneously because of interference)and I'm sure other problems will surface with the flavors of 802.11. But wireless technology just keeps advancing without much assessment of the risks, and the FCC seems more concerned with spectrum selloff and taxing modems than with the actual effects of the technology.
I also wonder, given the apparent senstivity of aircraft to the weak signals from cellphones, how safe are they really when powerful radar systems lock onto them? In the past, I have come across (ground-based) cases where directional radar caused severe interference and the military simply denied the existence of the radar (sorry, guys, panoramic receivers and signal strength meters are more reliable than base spokesmen.)It looks like this whole issue needs a lot more transparency and joint investigation. It isn't good enough just to say "OK, can't take this, switch them off". If there is an EMC problem with current aircraft, it needs to be investigated properly and we need to be told about it.
my own experiment... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I seriously doubt my phone operates anywhere near the band that my cell uses, but for some reason the cell manages to interfere. Based on the outcome of this little experiment, I would definitely believe that cells could interfere with other systems - including aircraft systems - even though it may seem counterintuitive.
Re:my own experiment... (Score:3, Funny)
Bah! (Score:5, Funny)
Talking on a cellphone while any vehicle is moving should be a crime punishable by a severe power stapling. Or caning, as they do in Singapore. Yeah... I've had 3 suvtards in the last month nearly take me out while driving their Maibatsu Mostrosities with cellphones glued to their ears. You may as well just down a fifth of Jack Daniels before getting behind the wheel of that thing. Shut up and drive!
They proved nothing ... (Score:5, Interesting)
It found evidence that calls produced interference levels which could disrupt aircraft systems. Faults that could be attributed to mobile phones use include
I see a lot of "coulds" and not a single "did". So what they found was that they have no better information now than they did before. Did they observe a single instance where there was interference? It's seems highly dubious that they couldn't construct a scenerio where they could conclusively show this "error".
And it's been stated before but I think it's worth mentioning again. By god, if cell phones are really capable of such chaos, why on earth do they allow them on the planes to begin with? Just what I need is to have someone bring down my plane because they forgot their phone was on in their briefcase, or 6 members of some terrorist org only need to start sms'ing each other to take down a 747 full of people. There is a severe disconnect between what the FAA is claiming and their actions taken. What, I have 5 people make sure I don't bring finger nail clippers onto the plane, but no one cares that I can bring the entire thing down with my Nokia?
Re:They proved nothing ... (Score:4, Funny)
The more research the better (Score:3, Insightful)
No discman, no PDA, no notebook... nasty. More research like this would show exactly which electronic equipment can cause disruption and which are safe.
Feasible way to identify cellphone use? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm perfectly cooperative, but on my last plane flight I had put my cell phone in my backpack, put the backpack in the overhead luggage, honestly thought it was turned off, and after landing discovered I had left it turned on.
What does a cell phone do when it's powered on but not being used to make or receive calls? Does it transmit occasionally and spontaneously?
So the next question is: without suggesting any draconian measures, is there any good way that flight staff can _detect_ that there's a powered-up cell phone on board--so that they can politely tell the flyer to turn it off?
Simple way to make it happen. (Score:4, Funny)
Suddenly, people will double check thier phones.
A related thought re:9/11 (Score:4, Informative)
Hmmmmmm.....
Just turn them off.... (Score:5, Informative)
It *is* up to the airlines to decide if a particular device is or is not to be used. What I mean by that is that although rumor has it that cell towers get screwed up if a phone "sees" too many of them, it's under the FAA's and the airline's discretion. Although I could be wrong, I am unaware of any FCC rule that says that cellular telephones are not to be used on planes.
For what it's worth, here is the relivant FAR:
125.204 Portable electronic devices.
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, no person may operate, nor may any operator or pilot in command of an aircraft allow the operation of, any portable electronic device on any U.S.-registered civil aircraft operating under this part.
(b) Paragraph (a) of this section does not apply to --
(1) Portable voice recorders;
(2) Hearing aids;
(3) Heart pacemakers;
(4) Electric shavers; or
(5) Any other portable electronic device that the Part 125 certificate holder has determined will not cause interference with the navigation or communication system of the aircraft on which it is to be used.
(c) The determination required by paragraph (b)(5) of this section shall be made by that Part 125 certificate holder operating the particular device to be used.
At any rate, and I know I will be slammed for this one: Why can't people play by the rules, ever? It seems that quite a few people don't turn off their cell phones on aircraft. It seems that these are the same people that get up before the airplane gets to the gate; the same people that don't turn off their cell phones when going to the theater. How much, really, does it harm your personal liberties to play by the rules occasionally, and turn off the damn things when on an airplane? This society seems to always be "me me me me", and this just seems to be a symptom.
So make the guy sitting next to you feel better. Put your seatback in the upright position when they tell you to, turn off the laptop when you should, and leave the cell phone off.
Power Failure (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a private pilot, and I always thought the reason cell phone usage was restricted wasn't interferance (on a clear day, you don't need any electronics in the plane, just spark to the plugs) I thought it was becuase the massivly increased range of the phone screws up the cell to cell protocol.
M@
A Cell Vacation (Score:4, Funny)
People will leave phones on (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:People will leave phones on (Score:5, Insightful)
Much easier said than done! There are miles of wire. Any break in the shielding can be enough to cause problems. Any corrosion can too.
Furthermore, the phone can cause interference by other processes, for example:
Your phone starts transmitting. It is at high power because it is hearing a weak signal. It's signal gets into your walkman via the headphone cable. Another signal, perhaps from a radio on the aircraft or another cell phone or whatever, also gets into that same cable. The two mix because the walkman is non-linear at those frequencies. The result is on the radio communications frequency, the ILS (Instrument Landing System) frequency, or GPS band.
In general, this whole thing is about incrementally improving safety. The odds of a single cell phone on a single flight causing a crash are very low. But the odds get much larger when you are talking millions of cell phones on hundreds of thousands of flights.
Even then, the cell phone may just *contribute* to an accident. Most commercial air crashes are a result of a cascade of individually recoverable failures or events. The cell phone may simply take out a backup system at a critical time, or it may interfere with a primary system (say, glideslope) while the pilot is distracted by another urgency.
For those who comment about how the presumably more susceptible legacy systems on the aircraft should be replaced... the systems mentioned include such minor systems as the only air-to-ground communications mechanism used for air traffic control, and the only instrument landing system available for many airports. Replacing this "legacy" infrastructure would require replacing every aircraft radio in every aircraft, control tower, air traffic center, etc in the world, and replacing all of the Instrument Landing Systems.
This is not trivial. Furthermore, in aircraft, it is not a good idea to rapidly replace systems that have been working and safe!
They'll Get My Cell Phone When They Pry It... (Score:3, Funny)
Assuming, of course, that they can find my fingers at the crash site.
(Actually, I don't own a cell phone...)
good, fix it (Score:5, Interesting)
Fine, so cell phones really do disrupt airplanes. I still don't believe it, but, if it's true then we've identified an exploit that needs to be fixed. "Please turn off your cellphone" is not a fix.
"Software company X has identified a buffer overflow in our popular Y software, which can lead to a remote root exploit. Rather than fixing it, we're asking that you please don't connect to port yz and send a string that is 5000 characters long and ends with the binary sequence..."
Moronic. Fix the bug and quit boring us with the details.
Michael
We don't play by the rules because... (Score:4, Insightful)
From the BBC story... (Score:4, Funny)
Other side-effects of mobile use I have noted:
Ade_
/
Yes indeed... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Passengers, do obey all instructions from the crew. Even if you don't get yourself and your fellow passengers killed, you can get in serious trouble for wilfully interfering with the operation of a vessel under way.
2) Airlines, FIX YOUR AVIONICS. Anything *that* fragile should not be associated with terms like "safety", except in a negative sense. No legally purchased electronic gizmo should be able to disrupt flight systems, period.
Experience (as a pilot) with GSM (Score:5, Interesting)
I fly light aircraft. On a dark, rainy night, a friend and I was approaching Ronaldsway. My friend was the 'handling pilot' (i.e. the guy who's waggling the stick), and I was in charge of the radios - setting up frequencies, identing navaids, talking to ATC etc. Although our aircraft (a Grumman Cheetah) only requires one aircraft, we fly together reasonably often and find this arrangement works very well.
My friend was at the time a very new instrument pilot. Ceilings (the bases of the clouds) were about 800 feet, winds were light, and it was pelting with rain. It was about an hour after sunset.
We were just intercepting the localiser (the horizontal guidance part of the ILS - instrument landing system), and we had been cleared for the ILS approach.
Suddenly, the radio was blotted out with:
'Bip-b b b bip b b bip b b bip b b bip' - the highly recognisable radio interference from a GSM phone. My friend had forgotten to switch it off when we had taken off an hour and a half earlier. His wife was phoning him.
It completely blotted out the COM radio with the extremely loud 'Bip-b b bip b b bip bzzzzzzzzzzzz' noise as the phone went off. However, it did not intefere with the nav radios nor the compass - the localiser needle continued to behave how it should have, as did the other instruments (the direction indicator, for example, is gyroscopic) and it did not affect the compass. However, the noise was extremely distracting, and if ATC had any further instructions, we had no chance of hearing them until we got the phone shut off or my friend's wife hung up.
Fortunately, with two of us on board, it was a non-event (I could fly whilst my friend turned the phone off).
An important point to remember: aircraft fly on the rules of Bernoulli and Newton, not the rules of Marconi! It's perfectly possible to fly without radios. The problem is in instrument conditions (i.e. in the clouds) where you can't navigate by looking out the windows. Even so, a prudent pilot always plans an 'out' in case of radio failure, and does not bet their lives on the continued operation of the com and nav radios!
I still contend there is no danger. (Score:3, Insightful)
But on the news, here's what they said that stuck in my mind. When the planes hit, Prez Bush was in the air on Air Force One. Security immediately went back to the press corps who were also on Air Force One and said turn OFF your cellphones NOW, we don't want anyone to be able to track us by the cellphones.
So ok, the MOST IMPORTANT PLANE IN THE COUNTRY can afford to have a press corps full of cellphones on during flight, but the plane I'm on is going to crash and burn if there's even one?
Riiiiight..
still suspect (Score:3, Funny)
You may now dawn your aluminum foil hat.
Home Experiment for Interference (Score:3, Informative)
Place it upright, next to your computer monitor speakers. This will probably work best if you use the speaker with the amplifier built in (the speaker with the volume control on it).
Now wait to get a call -- or better, if you've got one of those fancy phone that updates the clock every hour or so. Before the screen lights up and it rings or before it updates the time, you'll hear an odd sound coming out of speakers. That's an example of the interference a cell phone can create.
Try it right now, and you'll see I'm not kidding.
FAA Regs (Score:3, Informative)
This is ridiculous. It's not an airline regulation that bans the use of mobile phones; it's an FAA regulation. This applies to general aviation as well as airline flights, too.
Whether the effect is very significant I wouldn't be able to guess (past what the article says) but many instruments are extremely sensetive to electromagnetic fields and thus tuned to precision in the exact field at the spot on the plain in which they are mounted.
For example, the actual compass (as opposed to the directional gyro, a high-speed gyroscope which allows easier reading and does not have turning-errors and the like) is mounted by a trained professional who then parks the plane in a compass rose painted on the ground and computes the deviation on the compass due to metal, electrical currents, and so forth throughout the plane. Adding to those currents and fields could be a minor issue, at the least. Even "E6B" circular slide-rule flight computers are typically made out of plastic or aluminum to avoid throwing off the compass of placed on the dash next to it.
For that matter, its entirely possible that radio navigation aids like VOR or ADF would be sensetive to certain electromagnetic fields.
Even if there were no significant need for this, I highly doubt that an accross-the-board ban would result from the airlines' desire to charge more for phone use. The FAA is incompetent, but not that incompetent. And they seem to err most often on the side of lax regulation, so its not really that bad to see them being strict about something.
Re:why? (Score:5, Funny)
Have you ever tried winding down the windows?
Re:No, just like always (Score:5, Funny)
That's if they can decide how to put the plane together.
Re:What about EMP bombs then? (Score:3, Interesting)
Cell phones are worse for this sort of thing than say, a Gameboy, because the cell phone is built to be a transmitter.
Re:GPS Recievers (Score:3, Informative)
Is this a problem? Probably not, but just so you know... receiving does generate an electromagnetic field that could theoretically interfere with the most poorly designed electronics on the planet.
Re:DILDOS: "portable electronic devices" ??? (Score:5, Funny)
You idiot, the tv doesn't get screwed up, that's the razor making your face vibrate.
Re:Terrorist use? (Score:3)
(NB: you can turn of the 'phone electronics and leave the PDA active on a P800)
Re:frankly they shouldnt (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok...design shielding against any and all consumer products to be designed in 2023.
The military was shielding its cables back then, and I'd expect Boeing knew about it.
Well, since Boeing built many of those military aircraft, I'd expect they would have some idea about shielding against interference. Two things would seem to come into play. Weight and cost. It adds sig
Re:Disruptive interference, an example... (Score:4, Informative)
It's the tuned intermediate frequency amplifiers that create the EM waves - and they are effectively small radio transmitters.
But if you were building a military or avionics grade receiver, you would not only shield the case against those IF signals, you would filter them from being back-emitted via the antenna connection. The signals come out of the home radio because it's designed to be cheap and light, and proper shielding is expensive. In exactly the same way, well designed PCs have cases with spring connection fingers so as to shield them effectively, and ferrite beads on some of the ports to prevent the emission of radiation, while cheap ones or case mods with windows have large shielding holes and emit all kinds of crap.
Now, do you want to fly in an aircraft with cheap leaky avionics or well designed shielded wiring systems and boxes? I know which I'd prefer.