zabbo

When Alice and I arrived in Winnipeg for our visit this Christmas we got stuck in a pretty deep line waiting for the passengers to trickle through the few customs stalls that were open. I’m not entirely sure how we came to the topic but we got to talking about cell phones being prohibited on planes. I’ve long had this theory that it has nothing to do with the safety of the plane but was more about phones being confused when they can see so many cells from high up. I pretended to know what I was talking about.

First the guy behind us in line chimed in. He worked for Qualcomm and thought there was no way that the phones could actually reach the base stations on the ground and that it was about interference with the plane’s avionics. Then the guy in front of us in line mentions that he works in avionics and he didn’t buy that the phones could do any damage. I mean, honestly, what were the chances? It’d be like someone flapping his mouth off about Mozilla while waiting in line between Chris and Mike.

So I dug around a little and found advisory circular 92.21-1 from the FAA back in ‘93.

The FCC currently prohibits the use and
operation of cellular telephones while airborne. Its primary
concern is that a cellular telephone, while used airborne, would
have a much greater transmitting range than a land mobile unit.
This could result in serious interference to transmissions at
other cell locations since the system uses the same frequency
several times within a market. The FAA supports this airborne
restriction for reasons of potential interference to critical
aircraft systems.

Well, OK. A little of column A and a little of column B.

More recently, the FCC is considering allowing cell phones on planes. The plan seems to be to introduce a pico cell in the plane that would let the phones use much less power to transmit. Presumably this would stop the phones from reaching the ground and reduce interference with magical plane goo.