Oh crikey, the lunatics are running the asylum
"US Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) has written to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) asking for a rethink of the rules governing the use of in-flight electronics, and has threatened legislation if the agency won't shift its position."
That's the thing about law makers. They really do run the asylum^H^H^H^H^H^Hcountry.
Passing a law doesn't change the rules of physics. People should accept that the aircraft designers / engineers might just know their shit. They should also stop pressuring the organisation who's sole purpose is to ensure that aircraft designers / engineers really do know their shit. If they say it's not a good idea then IT'S NOT A GOOD IDEA. Some vote grabbing politico bent on fondling her slab all the way down to the runway is not qualified to assert otherwise.
"The current rules are inconvenient to travelers, don't make sense, and lack a scientific basis."
If not crashing and staying alive is inconvenient and doesn't make sense then society and this lady in particular have a problem with priorities.
"While it has never been proved that in-flight electronics could interfere with aircraft systems, there are thousands of devices out there and no one's done the testing."
If you know what you're doing (so *not* Myth Busters then) it's easy to design a test scenario whereby a mobile phone will interfere with electronics in an undesirable way. Ever heard how a GSM mobile interferes with a set of loud speakers?
What no one can do is *prove* that such a scenario won't accidentally get recreated in flight. Take that, and throw in the certainty that at least some of the passengers will always ignore the rules and not put their devices in flight mode and you've got an uncontrolled set of circumstances.
No aircraft designer would be prepared to say that their design is safe unless the circumstances are known and controlled. iPads are allowed because pilots can be relied upon to obey the rules, and theirs are probably not 3G anyway. The 10,000ft limit in force at the moment is there to give the pilots time to do something if any problem does occur. It seems probably from various unexplained incidences in flight around the world that problems do occur, but the very nature of the cause makes it impossible to analyse with any certainty.
The only real way to resolve this issue is to design an aircraft specifically for hundreds of devices not in flight mode and replace the existing entire world's fleet. That will likely add considerable weight in shielding and screening, it will certainly take a long time, and it will take a huge amount of money. I'd prefer the cheaper ticket.