Read the article, understand the vague sense of some of the issues … but I still don't understand why I have to turn off my old school Kindle during taxiing and landing, except that it's a bother for the flight attendants to know if it's one of those Hypothetically Evil Dangerous Devices or something. #ddtb
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What Alec Baldwin doesn’t know about air travel
Could Words With Friends really bring down a plane? The actor jokes, but cellphone interference can be serious
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Suggestions I’ve heard that make a little sense are (a) we don’t want hand-held devices to become dangerous projectiles during takeoff or landing, and (b) we don’t want people to be paying more attention to a device than to possible emergency instructions from the crew. But if (a) is the issue, then why don’t they require that no potential projectile may be in your hands or in your lap, and if (b) is the issue, why don’t they prohibit reading books or magazines during takeoff and landing?
Electronic interference with flight systems sounds reasonable to me, but I’ve read somewhere that cell phones don’t really pose any danger to modern flight systems, which is part of why the other two explanations might make sense. I think the no electronics during takeoff and landing rule is a rule that once made sense but no longer does, and is now kept in place by bureaucratic inertia.
Do I really want to be a passenger on a plane where my iPhone could interfere disastrously with onboard systems?
This does imply that a terrorist doesn’t need anything sophisticated to bring down a plane. I agree with Dave Newman’s assessment in the first paragraph.
@Marina – Well, obviously, it isn’t an automatic death sentence, otherwise we’d all be forced to — well, who knows what they’d force us to do. If it has an effect, it’s marginal, enough to increase the chances, in some cases, of something untoward happening.
Maybe.