Cellphones Disrupt Critical Airborne GPS Applications
PHILADELPHIA - Passengers and other people opposed to a Federal Communications Commission plan to allow the use of cell phones during airline flights now have some fresh data on their side.
A study by Carnegie Mellon University engineers, published this month in technology magazine IEEE Spectrum, found cell phones, laptops and other personal electronic devices can cause greater interference with an airplane’s critical electronics than previously believed.
The researchers concluded something else surprising by extrapolating data from late 2003 tests on 37 flights in the eastern United States: One to four cell-phone calls are typically being made aboard every airline flight in the country, despite the fact the calls are illegal and that flight crews tell passengers not to....
Well, my suspicions are confirmed. In spite of, or because of the fact that most school do an abysmal job of teaching anything technical in the US, the airline flying public who is poised to strike like a cobra at the merest hint of poor performance or lack of customer service by an airline, is indeed too stupid to follow the rules for themselves.
I’m certainly a supporter of keeping the cell phone ban because I don’t want to get stuck for hours with some lame-brain who yaks and yaks about family matters in a voice that carries from one end of the airplane to the other, but that is subjective,
Here’s some objective data which shows that cell phone use on airliners can, indeed, pose real-world hazards. You don’t get much more objective than the IEEE.
I had long suspected that a lot of brain-dead passengers were ignoring the cell phone ban already, this kind of makes that suspicion believable. I’d like to point out also, that the most dangerous time to be using the cell phone would be just before landing when the pilot might well be relying on GPS for course guidance, and that can be assumed the time when law breakers would be most likely to be calling … making sure than Aunt Tillie knows they are almost at the airport.
Now that we have some unassailable proof, let’s be smart and keep the cell phone ban in place .. surely those who have the darn things nearly permanently attached to their ears could manage to live a few hours at a time without incessant yakking?
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