Cell phones and pagers really dangerous to avionics?
I am *NOT* advocating that we allow cell phones or pagers to
be turned on during any part of any flight – however, does anyone
know of any documented avionics (flight radio and navigation)
problems caused by personal transmitters in the cabin?
Anbody know how "Myth Busters" debunked
this without themselves violating some
airline’s policies?
By the way, general aviation pilots routinely
carry cell phones AND USE THEM from
the air. Granted, their avionics is usually
pretty unsophisticated compared to
commercial airlines.
The only avionics that I know of that would
care would be ADF’s (which get directional
information from any modulated signal).
NOBODY uses ADFs any more. It would
be like trying to use a sextant for
positional information on the ocean.
If you were using it, you’d be trying to
prove something to somebody – not for
the accuracy of its information.
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Tagged with: accuracy • adf • airline • aviation pilots • avionics • cell phones • commercial airlines • general aviation • myth busters • navigation problems • pagers • radio • sextant • transmitters
Filed under: Cell Phone Information
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The true reason that cell phones are banned on airplanes was that the FCC requested that the FAA impose the ban. With the way cell phones continually contact cell towers to establish that link, imagine just one phone flying at 600 mph and contacting all the towers along the way. Now imagine several on one plane. Now imagine several tens of thousands crisscrossing the country.
The fear is that the cell network would backlog and collapse. So in a way, cellphones are dangerous to electronics, just not on the plane (in fact, I just flew to Chicago, and pulled out my phone just to realize that I left it on the whole flight. Oops.)
I mean, if it truly did have an effect, then we’d have planes falling out of the sky all day, every day, because someone forgot.
The TV show Mythbusters did an episode on this and they had no effect
They did note that the problem DID EXIST when cellphones were new ( documented ) but electronics have come a long way since then
Yes but only slight interference
but who wants to risk it at 30,000 feet
General Aviation pilots do not ROUTINELY use cell phones during flight, as it is both illegal and unsafe. To answer your question, cell phones and other tranciever/reciever devices are not allowed becuase it is possible for them to interfere with modern flight instruments. EFIS (Electronic Flight Information System) is a delicate tool, run by a computer, and while I don’t remember if it has been documented, we discussed in my Integrated Flight Operations class at college, an incident of EFIS just shutting off suddenly, when a group of reporters on a private flight were interviewing some famous person, and the person let out some major news and all the reporters called their publishing desks while airborne to try to get the story out first.