…as they interfere with the aircraft’s communications.
Really?
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Dear flight attendant,
Let’s stop, pause and ruminate over what you just said.
Are you saying, that you and your crew, who are supposed to have great presence of mind and judgment and are solely responsible for ensuring my safety in case the going gets tough, really believe in what you just said?
Which is basically that aircrafts that cost upwards of Rs.300 crore (US$ 60 mn) are routinely getting built, and sold, and bought by the entire airline industry when all the stakeholders involved know that the most ubiquitous device in the history of the world interferes with its proper functioning?
Seriously?!
Signed,
It hasn’t made sense for a long time
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What about all that spectrum the Government sells to telecom companies?
Did they sell that to the airlines too?
Btw, in case you’ve followed the news over the last decade, the reason for this change in policy was probably different – passengers on United Airlines Flight 93, the fourth flight on the fateful morning of September 11, 2001 that crashed in Pennsylvania had learnt about the other hijackings through phone calls they could make using the aircraft phone and their mobiles. It was soon after this that the airline industry decided to disallow people from using mobile phones probably to avoid widespread panic in case such an event were to ever happen again.
And in any case, in India, it’s not even as if mobile phones would work up in the air even if you were to allow them.
Telecom operators usually focus on coverage that spans across the surface of the earth, not towards the sky, which is more true in India than the rest of the world as India probably has amongst the lowest percentage of skyscrapers in urban areas across the world. This is reinforced by the fact that there are coverage issues in most high-rise buildings, starting at heights of 80 metres or more, which are usually rectified by telecom operators by using IBSs (in-building solutions).
So if Indian users can’t really use mobile phones while up in the air to spread information (which I believe is actually beneficial in case of a hijacking), and mobile phones don’t really interfere with aircraft communications, then what’s the harm in letting your passengers enjoy their phones for a while longer?
Unless of course, the airlines have realized that their brand perception dips even more when their passengers are allowed to use phones as it lets them complain to their friends and family about how the airline’s flight is behind schedule again, which for those unaware with the Indian aviation scene, is quite an endemic problem these days…
Full disclosure: On a trip from Bangalore to Goa in 2005, my phone was on throughout the flight. The network came on a full 9 minutes before the plane landed on the tarmac, safe and sound. Nowadays I prefer to turn the phone off without being asked – to conserve battery, more than anything else. But then again, it’s usually never before the aircraft is on its final run to takeoff…
Let us add another piece of pertinent information. the luxury cars like BMW, Skoda, Jags, etc. all have a weird aerial coming out at the top of the car…ever wondered why? its a cell signal streamliner…it ensures that the cell signals do not interfere with the cars internal systems….read it in the car manual…its all there… so the technology is there… to use phones on airlines w/o interfering with the comms of the aircraft and the “sensitive” comp controlled instruments… They just want you to enjoy the in-flight torture they lovingly call “entertainment”…
I would’ve never doubted that the technology to prevent interfering would exist… but it’s interesting to know that cell signals would interfere with cars’ internal systems.
Well on US flights now you can use WiFi … So if security is the only reason for the ban on using mobile phones, it seems foolish! However we still need to turn off electronic devices for the first and last 10-15 mins of the flights.
Sanjukta, I did come across the WiFi availability on aircraft a few days ago. I also think the ban on mobile phones initially would have started off due to the reasons above, and probably along the way, especially after the high adoption of mobile phones, it would have become too cumbersome to manage call traffic billing due to reasons like roaming charges across state and country borders, so they probably never tried bringing it back on.
That being said, it would make sense for someone in the know to throw more light on this topic.
We also know that telephony while flying have existed at least since the late 80s… remember Bruce Willis in Die Hard? His wife calls him using an aircraft phone, although the chances of those being Inmarset or Satellite phones are relatively high.