Mobile Phones to be allowed to be used during flights

**1D4LV** · September 25th, 2006 01:19 PM

Originally Posted by niky

So... Airlines are finally admitting that cellphones don't interfere with avionics?

I'd heard from a tech who works with airlines that mobiles do work and don't interfere with planes. It's just that they banned these due to security reasons.

And why not allow CPs on planes? Sure, it's irritating if the person on the CP talks in a loud voice, but that's merely a question of etiquette, and not usage. And if your seatmate is annoyingly talkative, you can at least pretend that you have an urgent call to make.

Allowing people to use CPs will give them the "security blanket" effect that such device have for some people (i.e.: as long as you're connected/reachable, you're safe). I think this is a good thing.

Next up: un-ban cellphone use at the gas pumps. That one's even more ridiculous than the plane ban.

if i remember it right, busted na rin kasi ito ng mythbusters.

**niky** · September 25th, 2006 03:47 PM

Oo nga... it just gets my ire that they ban cellphones at the pumps... one company states that it's not the RF signals or microwave signals... it's the possibility of sparks daw from defective keypads.

If this is true, they should ban the digital keypads on new gas pumps, the flourescent lights overhead, and they should have all car-owners stop their cars twenty feet away, disconnect the batteries and remove them, and push the cars up to the pumps.

Madness, I tell you... madness!!! Bwahahaha...

**Horsepower** · September 25th, 2006 04:18 PM

actually, mythbusters proved that this theory is quite correct, but only to american signals (GSM 850 ata yun or 900).

**niky** · September 25th, 2006 05:12 PM

Actually, what they proved is that the signals from older phones (I'm assuming non-GSM) have an effect on unshielded equipment. Their test equipment was so poorly shielded that when they took it out of the faraday cage for a real world run, they went crazy.

Their follow-up test inside a real plane (sitting on the runway) produced no discernible deflection of the instruments. An engineer explained that because modern airplane instruments and equipment interfere with each other, the equipment on the aircraft is very well shielded... thus, no interference from cellphones.

Thus, if a cellphone can cause equipment to malfunction, that means the shielding has failed, and most likely the aircraft's other equipment is also interfering with the affected instrument's readings.