[Off-Topic] Cell Phones and Airplanes

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a few months. It came up by chance on Twitter

@AkitaOnRails, if you crash the plane tweeting with that 3G on, you’ll embarrass the whole country! LOL!!!

Of course it was a joke :-) But anyway, it motivated me to finally write about it. It’s about people’s behavior based on false premises.

A few months ago, while I was heading to yet another event, I — on purpose, as always — kept my iPhone on. Normally I put it on Airplane Mode while in the air to save battery, but before takeoff I was watching a video podcast. Then a lady next to me decided to pick a fight and tell me to turn it off. Obviously I ignored her. Then what did she do? She called a flight attendant. Ugh.

She even blurted out what many ignorantly still believe: “this ‘gentleman’ is risking my life!” Imagine my urge to let out a “shut the fuck up!” — of course I didn’t :-)

I imagine readers of my blog don’t believe this, but even so, many may not know why this warning exists on planes. Just think about it. If a wireless electronic could really have even the slightest chance of interfering with the plane’s communication, to the point of bringing it down, would you, as the airline owner, allow anyone to board your plane with a cell phone??

It’s the same thing as letting someone board with a bomb and just politely asking “we ask passengers carrying bombs not to activate them while inside the plane.” Duh! The fact that we can board with electronics is proof that none of this equipment puts the plane at risk. It would be stupidity. If it really did bring it down, all cell phones would have to be checked in a lead container, just like pointy objects or similar things are not allowed.

So, if it does no harm, why does this damn message still play before we take off and land? Now it’s a conclusion based on induction. Which are the two most critical moments of a flight? Yes, takeoff and landing. Those are exactly the moments the crew wants passengers to be paying most attention to any emergency message. Now, if everyone is wearing headphones, playing their video games, typing on their laptops, an emergency message will take a long time until everyone understands. So the main goal of telling you to turn off your equipment is solely and exclusively to get our attention. Nothing more.

My conspiracy theory is: if they just told the truth: “to get your attention in case of emergency, we ask you to turn off your equipment,” no one would turn it off. So they must figure it’s better to use collective stupidity to their advantage and say “we ask you to turn off your cell phones, video games, mp3 players, computers, and it isn’t enough to leave it in airplane mode.” That is, implicitly using fear of signal interference so that the passengers themselves bother others — as happened to me — generating peer pressure that forces others to turn off, just to avoid the trouble of arguing.

By the way, if all of that were really true, I would never board a plane. People with bad intentions exist, why trust that they’d turn theirs off? In fact, I wouldn’t understand why anyone would work on a plane knowing that passengers are a risk. Imagine!

So yes, if you believe cell phone signals can bring down a plane, you’re still suffering from mental laziness as I said in my previous article. If you still want more details, I happened to find today an episode of Mythbusters exactly about this.

Electronic equipment does not bring down airplanes. Airlines are smartly using your fear generated by collective ignorance. Clever strategy.

Oh, and although this doesn’t exactly serve as proof, I’ve tested this on almost all my flights and kept my iPhone and iPod on during the flight :-P I didn’t see the plane falling on any of those times, obviously. But of course, I’m always paying attention during takeoff and landing, because I understand the principle — the rest is just experimentation.