Comment Articles

Airborne phones should be no crime

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 05 Feb 2003 17:26 GMT

My pal the pilot was grumbling again. He'd been stuck at the front end of a 737 for two hours in last week's winter wonderland, waiting for people in snowploughs to plough some snow. He'd kept the engines turning over -- and company rules say that when the engines are on, the passengers can't use their mobile phones.

The passengers saw things differently: was the aircraft going to drop out of the sky? Chance would be a fine thing. Mobile phones are there to be invoked precisely when the demons of travel hawk the phlegm of delay into the soup of planning. A mild revolt was underway, and the cabin crew were petitioning the pilot to exert his authority via the PA. Pilots rarely like having to actually deal with the self-loading freight that pay their wages, even when isolated by microphone. Hence the grumble: "Don't these people realise those rules are there for a purpose?"

It's a scene repeated in various ways all the time, all over the world. The idea behind banning mobile phones in-flight is simple: it's well known that strong radio signals can disrupt electronic equipment, and high on the list of stuff that shouldn't lose the plot are the bunches of chips and wires that keep several hundred tons of metal, flesh and fuel going in the right direction at thirty five thousand feet. No argument, right? Even when you're on the ground, mobile phones can and have trigger fire sensors and other alarms on the flight deck -- so the rule makes sense. If only it were that simple.

First, the rule doesn't work. Lufthansa has said, in response to a question from the Bluetooth Aviation working group, that on average each of its flights has at least one mobile phone left on. It seems safe to assume that this figure is true for all carriers, at least in Europe, but as yet no serious incident has taken place due to Hans forgetting to discharge his Siemens over Munich. I'm not fastidious in much, but I take aircraft rules seriously and always always turn off my mobile before boarding. Unfortunately, always always turns out to mean around four out of five: a late gate change or some other rush, and it's easy to forget.

Then, what is a mobile phone anyway? Recent visitors to the ZDNet UK labs have included portable gizmos with various combinations of Bluetooth, GPRS, GPS, and 802.11b -- all stuff that can radiate signals (yes, even GPS receivers count) and are banned in the air. It's a fair bet that some people who buy this stuff won't be too clued up about turning off the radioactive bits, and that the cabin crew won't be adept at spotting which latest gadget has what wireless networking built-in. So unless you ban all electronic devices, you can't ban transmitters.