Airplanes vs Cellphones

 

 

Every time you get inside an airplane you will be informed about safety rules in order to have a safe flight, and just before takeoff, the flight attendant will ask you to turn all the electronic devices including your cell phone. Many people don’t know why they are asked to do so and if they asked why the answer will be that cellphones can interfere with the airplane`s radio system which might cause a disaster.

A lot of people, including the flight attendants in the airplane, believe that cellphones can really cause a huge problem to the airplane due to the radio frequency emitted from them which can interfere with the aircraft frequencies. However, some people will just keep using their phones and nothing will happen to the airplane.

“The real reason the ban of cell phones exist has nothing to do with flight safety. Cell phone networks have a small risk of not work properly when a phone accesses them from a high vantage point, and so federal communication regulators prohibit the use of mobile phones from the air. Federal aviation regulators enforce it because of the communication laws” (Egan, 2007).

The real fact is that airplane companies like Boing and Airbus spend millions of dollars to enhance the safety of their aircrafts, thus they made their aircraft immune to foreign signals and they work in  completely different frequency ranges. In fact, some aircraft have a built-in micro cellular tower which can allow the passengers to use their cellphones and make international calls to their loved ones.

However, people still need to pay attention and turn all their electronic devices off during the low altitude portion of the flight which are take-off and landing. They should also keep their devices in a secure place because the last thing you want is to have a flying IPad in the cabin!

Now, a lot of people say that phones should be banned because it's annoying for other passengers. That's fine, that's a perfectly valid perspective; but it's not valid to promote this perspective by making up bad science to claim the phones are a danger to the aircraft.

 

 

 

References:

1-Elgan, Mike. "Why cell phones are still grounded." Computerworld.com. Computer World, 6 Apr. 2007. Web. 14 Dec. 2009. <http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9015839/Why_cell_phones_are_still_grounded?taxonomyId=15&pageNumber=1>

2-Ely, J.J., Nguyen, T.X., Koppen, S.V., Salud, M.T. "Electromagnetic interference assessment of CDMA and GSM wireless phones to aircraft navigation radios." Proceedings of the 21st Digital Avionics Systems Conference. 10 Dec. 2002, Volume 2: 13E4-1- 13E4-13.

3-Heussner, K. "Why Can't We Use Cell Phones On Planes?" abcnews.go. ABC News Internet Ventures, 9 Feb. 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2010. <http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/story?id=6833039&page=1>