China decrees in-flight cellphone calls are safe Following two years of study, China has decided that in-flight calls are safe, but anyone hoping to make a call, or access the internet, on a Chinese flight will still be disappointed. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT, not to be confused with MIT) has spent two years studying the affects of in- …
Now I can tell that stupid stewardess to STFU when she insists that "all mobile phones *must* be switched off *throughout* the flight, *even* if they have Flight-Mode."
Stupid cnut.
Wasn't the original reason for no mobiles on planes because when 400 mobiles simultaneously try to log into a cell tower, with a weak signal, travelling at speed, there tends to be a trail of knocked-out towers under the flightpath of a 747?
I suspect if you did tell the "stewardess" (and presumably you're only standing up to female cabin crew here) to STFU, then you'd find yourself in the arms of law enforcement when you touched down.
Notwithstanding your fellow passengers comfort in *not* hearing you yabber on throughout the flight, you are obliged to act upon all requests from the cabin crew whether you like them or not.
Last time I flew, I was settling into my seat when I heard the tannoy remind us to switch off all mobile phones. I got my mobile phone out and was switching it off when a steward came storming down the plan shouting (yes I do mean shouting) that I should not be using my mobile phone and to PUT IT AWAY. My protest that I was doing exactly the tannoy had instructed was met by steam coming out of his ears and a threat to report me to the captain for refusing to put away my phone.
Passengers are not the only Bungholes (usually those who think passengers are bungholes)
So little time.
It's fellow-travelers like you that sure make flying fun -- "I don't care about rules and regulations - China is allowing cell phones on planes now!"
Let's just hope for your sake that the Chinese FCC equivalent made good on their word having tested everything before they ship out electrical equipment...
"My phone switched on by accident, you cnut ^H^H^H^H officer!"
Unless the regulations change, you're still not allowed. Deal with it. And I _will_ rat you out if you're sitting close to me and I spot you using a phone.
You're quite right about the reason for not having your phone switched on. Planes used to leave little trails of broken cells. The reason is also that as the planes were high up the phones on them were weakly interacting with quite a lot of towers (well several at a time) frantically bouncing around trying to find the strongest signal (which was changing so fast they could never quite keep up).
Flight mode is fine, though I'd always suggest being polite to anyone trying to keep civilised several hundred fractious people who have just been through airport security and now have mewling brats to contend with. It's the only humane thing to do. They have to deal in generalisations and if the airline has just got into trouble because a lot of people lied about having put their phones onto flight mode, it's reasonable that they'd want them all turned off.
"We did an investigation, and as far as most travellers are concerned, connecting to the internet on a flight definitely isn’t travellers’ first choice; what’s more important to them is passing the time on their flight via exciting activities."
So you would rather be restricted in what to view/do on your laptop compared with doing anything ?
imo i would rather play online games or chat with VOIP clients than play a movie on my laptop that i've seen thousands of times.
Can you trust the flight crew, the maintenance crew, the cargo loaders, the fuel truck drivers?
If the cabin crew think that a phone in flight mode can crash the plane - perhaps the pilots believe that waving their arms around and making jet noises keeps it flying, perhaps maintenance think that engines should leak oil and tanker drivers think lbs and kg are the same thing.
I did give you an up-vote, but let's be honest here:
Pilots are known for flying planes, and maybe having a thing with the ladies.
Cabin crew are generally known for doing anything with anyone in the toilets (not sure that's true), and being a bit, well how to put this kindly? See the picture...
Oh and bagage handlers are known for having arms longer than a gorilla and running competitions for how far they can throw a bag or how many bits they can smash it into.
If a single Lightsquared base station can interfere with GPS receivers over a wide area, why wouldn't 400+ mobile phones flying in close formation interfere with the GPS on top of the plane?
I'm not convinced that they've got a way of discovering whether a plane crashed because of interference or straightforward equipment failure. Are we about to see a string of inexplicable plane crashes? They will happen, but if they're rare will anyone bother to find out why? I suspect not.
I'm not a fan of mobiles on planes, purely because anyone that would use one in that situation would most likely be an ignorant loud mouth. Having said that, no it would not effect local base stations and no it would not effect GPS..... UAE already have and allow use of Satellite back-hauled BTS's on their planes... Oh and if you use one in a petrol station you won't blow it up either (unless you drop it and the battery falls off causing a spark... So probably best to play safe eh!)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2023
