New devices worry FAA
Washington - Consumers are not the only ones impressed by the proliferation of new portable electronic devices. So is the Federal Aviation Administration - but not favorably.
Portable electronic technology is changing faster than air safety rules, according to experts at the agency, the airlines and elsewhere, who are scrambling to keep up.
Wi-Fi cards, wireless modems, hand-helds with wireless e-mail service and even cell phones with games are all what the FAA calls "intentional emitters," devices that put out radio energy at a variety of frequencies.
Passengers are carrying them onto planes that have long relied on radio navigation beacons on the ground; lately the planes also need signals from fainter sources orbiting the earth, the Global Positioning System satellites. And the planes often have their own wireless systems for equipment that was added after they were built, like emergency lighting along the aisles.
Interference between passengers' devices and the planes' systems is difficult to gauge and probably rare, experts say, but the possibility of stray signals is stirring anxiety.
"It is thorny, and it gets messy fast," said William E. Winfrey, a specialist in advanced technologies at Delta Air Lines.
Winfrey is a co-chairman, with a Boeing expert, David P. Carson, of a committee established last year at the request of the FAA to explore the problem. Scores of experts from airlines, aircraft equipment makers and consumer electronics companies have been meeting since early 2003 and hope to issue recommendations in about 18 months.
Yet new products are entering the market so fast that the committee's recommendations will be quite broad rather than tied to specific products, Winfrey said.
While travelers may know that cell phones are signal producers and comply with rules banning their use in flight, their understanding of the risks posed by other devices is fuzzier. Passengers with laptops equipped with Wi-Fi cards may turn on the laptop without grasping that it is broadcasting, looking for an access point. Some may turn on a wirelessly equipped hand-held to look at a calendar and forget that it, too, is radiating.
The seriousness of the problem is hard to gauge. Winfrey and Carson are not certain that there has ever been a problem in flight that was traced directly to electronic interference originating on board. But the idea haunts safety experts.
In theory, all devices are putting out radio frequency emissions only in the ranges assigned to them by the Federal Communications Commission and thus should not interfere with each other. But electronics experts worry about signals straying outside the assigned range. Those emissions would not have to be large to cause a problem.
http://www.jsonline.com/bym/tech/news/mar04/218154.asp