Originally Posted by
tdracer
Electro-Magnetic Interference can be very difficult to measure and evaluate. Even documented cases of EMI often can't be duplicated in the lab.
I recall one case many years ago - a flight crew on a Boeing aircraft started observing some very unusual avionics behavior. The cabin crew observed a passenger playing a gameboy type device - when they had the passenger turn it off the problem immediately went away. The airline actually purchased the computer game from the individual and gave it to Boeing to investigate - and Boeing could find nothing unusual about the device or duplicate any sort of unusual behavior
That being said, the FAA and FCC have done a horrible job of handling this issue...
TD' that sounds like an incident i had with a Motorola flip phone in 95 on a B763ER. driving along mind in neutral, get fire messages on both engines, APLT drops off, ATR quits, and we look at each other asking what did you do.... ? all lights go out and we put the APLT back on snooze and the ATR back into elegant level of noise mode, And relax, and 1 minute later, same thing again. Hmmm. Phone call from cabin.... hey cap, is it OK that the business pax is using his mobile phone. We ask the cabin chief to get them to turn it off, and the cockpit returns to normal. We then ask them to do the same thing again in 5 minutes and we get the same messages and they disappear when the lads turn the phone back off. We ask the passenger to give the phone to the chief to keep until we are on the ground. The report goes in. Years later, I'm in a tech pilot role on the 787 and in a meeting at fort fumble, the OEM says they have never had an incident on any brand X plane of interference. Brand X, I beg to differ.