One of my great frustrations when travelling on commercial aircraft is the amount of drama that is seemingly created by the mobile phones and electronic equipment on-board.
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The situation hit the ridiculous level a couple of years ago when I was travelling home from the US. Fog at Sydney airport meant that the plane couldn’t land at Kingsford Smith and we were diverted to Brisbane.
The plane landed and the captain announced that we would sit on the tarmac for approximately an hour after which time we would take off again and fly to Sydney.
Rather than sit in my seat and twiddle my thumbs, I thought I could catch up on some e-mails that I missed while in the air.
I pulled my notebook and phone out and connected to the Internet but the incredibly alert hostess was all over me. I was told I couldn’t use my phone.
I was brave enough to ask why. The hostess told me that the electromagnetic radiation from the phone could affect the navigation equipment.
I looked out the window at the tarmac of Brisbane Airport and told the hostess that if the pilot needed navigation equipment to work out where we were right now, we were in a lot of trouble. The look from the hostess told me I should just put my phone away.
The ridiculous part of this situation is that people are of the belief that mobile phones were originally banned by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the US.
It was actually the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that originally prohibited the use of mobile phones aboard aircraft and it had nothing to do with aircraft safety.
They were originally banned to prevent disruption to cellular towers on the ground. The original analogue (AMPS) mobile network re-used frequencies on non-adjacent towers so a mobile phone at height could potentially reach too many towers thus causing interference with the mobile phone network.
There has been extensive testing conducted by a variety of organisations and, to this day, there has been no conclusive proof that an active mobile phone will cause interference to the aircraft.
Further to technical research, separate surveys have shown that, on average, there are 15 phones on each international flight and 5 phones on every domestic flight that are left on and fully operational and further research shows there are three per cent of people who never turn their phone off.
The airlines own the planes so they are fully within their rights to tell people how to behave on their planes and I am sure the airlines are fully aware of the fact that safety is not an issue here.
If mobile phones really posed a threat to aircraft safety, I highly doubt if the airlines would leave the power in the hands of passengers. All mobiles would be confiscated before you boarded the aircraft.
Nail scissors are removed from your person before boarding for safety reasons yet, ‘highly dangerous’ mobile phones are left for the passengers to control.
I know of one flight attendant who runs the company line of telling passengers to turn off their phones and then sits down and starts texting until she needs to start serving meals.
This is a classic case of fear of technology without any data to support the fear. We see it happen in so many situations in our daily lives where people don’t use technology for no other reason than the fear factor.
I say that we should embrace technology and control it rather than having the fear of technology control us.
Even though there are no technical reasons to ban mobile phones on modern aircraft, I am thankful for one aspect.
I am not sure if I would want to sit beside a passenger for an entire flight while they talk to their kindergarten child about their day at school. Hearing some of these types of conversations as you board the aircraft is one thing but for an entire flight?
Maybe the ban isn’t such a bad idea after all...