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Inflight cellphone use, though prohibited, happens:

Researchers monitoring flights in the Northeast found that several cellphone calls are typically made on commercial flights during takeoff or final approach, two critical flight stages when accidents could occur.

The fact that people occasionally cheat, violating FAA and FCC rules, is not a surprise. How often have you seen a flight attendant remind a passenger to turn off their phone or other electronic device?

I have always gone along with the directive, shutting everything down, even though I thought it was probably overblown. The cynic in me assumed that this was a way for the airlines to get you to use the Verizon Airfone in the seatback (or the inflight wi-fi). After all, how could a laptop or PDA bring down a Boeing? And if the electronics are THAT sensitive, wouldn’t there be risk for the duration of the flight, and not just during the climb and descent? But this bit in the article gives pause:

Granger Morgan, head of Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy Department, said the activity recorded shows that the use of electronic devices should be limited on airplanes. Morgan said the disruptions are enough to impact a plane’s navigation or other systems.

Yikes! But how disruptive, exactly? I guess we’ll have to wait for the latest issue of IEEE Spectrum to hit the newsstands.

Update: IEEE Spectrum’s article is available here. Notable highlights:

Our data and the NASA studies suggest to us that there is a clear and present danger: cellphones can render GPS instrument useless for landings.
[…]
In one telling incident, a flight crew stated that a 30-degree navigation error was immediately corrected after a passenger turned off a DVD player and that the error reoccurred when the curious crew asked the passenger to switch the player on again. Game electronics and laptops were the culprits in other reports in which the crew verified in the same way that a particular PED caused erratic navigation indications.

Yikes!!

tags: travel | air travel | cellphones

A reader e-mails:

Why is it necessary for the EU-US open skies agreement to be linked to changes in ownership rules??

Good question. The short answer is that the EU wants a level playing field. The United States’ restrictive ownership rules, they argue, are out of step with the norms of global capitalism. Air France and KLM crossed borders and became one company recently. Lufthansa reached across its southern border and bought Swiss. Why not transatlantic combinations?

Perhaps it’s noteworthy that United is one of the airlines protected by the existing bilateral arrangement, but supportive of the change in the ownership rules. (Wonk out by reading the February 8, 2006 Congressional testimony, both pro and con, here.) United stands to lose its oligopoly on London Heathrow landing rights, yet it actually favors the open skies treaty. Why?

The WSJ cites “greater integration of U.S. carriers and overseas partners.” Integration could mean timetable alignment between alliance members, or it could be an outright merger. Forbes Magazine speculated that a Lufthansa-United merger could be in the cards, among other possible transatlantic combinations (e.g., American-British, Continental-Virgin, Northwest-AirFrance-KLM).

At the other end, Continental, which could presumably bid for slots at Heathrow, opposes the deal. Perhaps because of fear of an LH/UA matchup? Who can say…

Perhaps this is a case where the “open skies” portion of the deal is really the sideshow, and that opinions on open skies are really a matter of jockeying for a merger? If so, then the consumer might NOT benefit as much as I earlier suggested.

tags: travel | air travel | mergers | open skies

Via BoingBoing.net,

Alec Saunders reports that Montreal airport has put covers over its electrical outlets, presumably to stop people from charging their laptops and phones while travelling. Which is, you know, really dumb: frequent travellers need juice between flights, and airports that sell WiFi without providing the electricity to use it are like coffee-shops without toilets. They’re missing out on the revenue they’d get from people who’d buy the WiFi if only they had the power to use it.

Precisely. What I fear, though, is that airports will soon start renting power by the hour, and that we’ll soon see electrical outlets in airports with a meter attached. (Dang, now I’m giving them ideas…)

Time to invest in another spare laptop battery.

tags: travel | airports | business travel | wifi | laptop power