Comments on: FAA device rules illustrate the folly of a regulated internet

By: NoBody

NoBody — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 01:35:00 +0000

It would be interesting to know the author’s opinion on other regulatory agencies such as EPA and the like. We have the same (imho) ill-educated, incompetent, dinosaur-ic type(s) in charge of regulating how we use our land, teach our children, et al. After all, you can’t simply parcel out one section of the government as being fairly ineffective without implicating the whole..

By: Mxx

Mxx — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 22:33:00 +0000

I strongly disagree with your analogy of FAA with FCC’s internet regulation.

However, I do agree that the current “rules” should be re-evaluated.
I wouldn’t be surprised if cellphone/other electronic devices were perfectly safe to use at any point during a flight.
I sure as hell hope plane’s electronics are shielded enough to safely operate even when somebody refuses(or forgets) to turn off their cell phone. I would not want safety to be in the hands of passengers’ voluntary compliance.

Additionally, planes had to cope with external radio interference for years. I’m sure it’s a lot more significant from cities, towns, countries that are around airports. Yet we don’t see swat teams busting down people’s doors to demand they turn off their microwave ovens or FM radios.

By: Mxx

Mxx — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 22:20:00 +0000

Airlines will do anything in their power to maximize their profits. If left alone, they will do absolutely bare minimum to deliver passengers to their destinations to avoid lawsuits. If they could, they would shove passengers like sardines in a tin can. If they could, they would sell their own “approved” cell phones that would be allowed to used on planes.

Cathy, you are as biased against FAA as you are biased toward airlines and telco/cableco carriers.

By: Cathy Reisenwitz

Cathy Reisenwitz — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 21:28:00 +0000

Thanks so much for commenting Treza. It doesn’t make sense that the people who built the airplane and put it in the air simply cannot be trusted to determine whether electronic devices can be safely used. You may not, for whatever reason, want to trust them, and prefer your safety be protected by a government agency. That’s fine, but there’s a tradeoff there, in that that government agency’s regulations will be behind the airline decisions in the recency of its information and will be more cautious than the airlines would be. Again, you may prefer this. But to say airlines must or can not be trusted is mistaken. It’s a preference.

By: TREZA

TREZA — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 01:43:00 +0000

A few remarks :

- Airlines don’t have the competence to decide what is safe or what is not safe in an aircraft, it is the responsability of the legal authorities that deliver licences to
aircraft manufacturers and equipment providers. (And airlines don’t _want_ to be responsible)
The current rule is that everything onboard must pass qualification tests in order to
be accepted (even the toaster!). Allowing any random electronic device is quite a departure from the ‘normal’ procedure.

- On this subject, all sorts of testings have been performed with the collaboration of aircraft manufaturers. This takes time and doing test flights isn’t cheap. You must also realise that aircraft are used for at least 20years and takes many years to design. Planes flying now have been developed at a time when this issue didn’t exist and new elecromagnetic compatibility issues are coming as airplanes are shifting from aluminium to composite (carbon fiber) construction. The idea that the FAA has “incentives” for the status quo is silly. The FAA, the NASA, Boeing, Airbus and many others have worked on this subject but taking 10 years to decide is not really a long time, creating a new aircaft takes as long (;-)

- The FAA is collaborating with other agencies like the JAA (Europe), JAXA (Japan), CAA (China), OACI (UN) and try to have common positions. Aircrafts are not built only for the US market.

- Goverment agencies should be reasonably neutral and avoid conflicts of interests with the industry, for aircrafts, for drugs, and for all sorts of technologies. They also use experts both in-house and external. The airlines cannot control (and it would cost an insane amount of money for each airline to perform its own set of tests) and equipment manufacturers are far from neutral and can’t be trusted (believe me, never trust them blindly!).

- There is no relation between FAA rules and Internet regulation. Period.

[Sorry, I'm not a native English writer, words are certainly not all appropriate. I'm working for an aircaft manufacturer.]

By: GeoffDepew

GeoffDepew — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 01:38:00 +0000

classic: hold down the play/pause button for three seconds.

touch: same as the iphone, hold down the lock button at the top until the ‘slide to power off’ appears. Slide, and wait.

Both of these are documented in the instructions that came with the device.

By: Joe Haynie

Joe Haynie — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:04:00 +0000

How do you turn an iPod off?

By: Tom H.

Tom H. — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 22:58:00 +0000

Your mistaken. I can’t think of a single Apple product that can’t be turned off and I own and use a fairly wide variety of them.

By: Joe Haynie

Joe Haynie — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 22:45:00 +0000

If I’m not mistaken, many Apple devices don’t even turn off. They must be magically exempt from interfering with avionics…

By: NoahFect

NoahFect — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 22:15:00 +0000

*Well…as a frequent flyer and technical person by trade, I really don’t have a problem with the FAA playing it “too safe” when it comes to such devices.*

Yes, you do, because superstition is not safety.