“Please switch off all mobile phones, since they can interfere with the aircraft’s navigation systems. At least, that’s what you’ve always been told. The real reason to switch them off is because they interfere with mobile networks on the ground, but somehow that doesn’t sound quite so good. On most flights a few mobile phones are left on by mistake, so if they were really dangerous we would not allow them on board at all, if you think about it. We will have to come clean about this next year, when we introduce in-flight calling across the Veritas fleet. At that point the prospect of taking a cut of the sky-high calling charges will miraculously cause our safety concerns about mobile phones to evaporate.”
You know what? It would really suck to die on a commercial airliner.
Full article here: Fear of Flying
(thx daisho)
I read somewhere that they make you turn off your cell phones not to protect the plane, but to protect ground based cellular networks.
The more I thought about it, the more it makes sense. It takes a lot of horsepower to have someone’s call switch across several towers when they’re driving down the highway. A plane full of cell phone users flying at a low enough altitude could amount to denial of service attack on the cell carriers.
Why would the Airlines worry about it? I’m sure there’s a lawyer somewhere to thank for it.
that’s a good point. it would be easy to see how cell nodes around airports, for instance, might become easily inundated.