Originally Posted by Flip Flop Flyer
...a fire warning triggered by a mobile phone left on in the aft hold....
Can anyone not speculate, but post FACTUAL accounts of mobile phones causing anomaly's? After many years (well over two decades) of flying everything from conventional to the latest whiz-bang-more-advanced-than-the-Space-Shuttle machines, I have YET to experience any alarm / warning / shut-down / pressurization / "it's not working...!" / "Huh, why's it doing that??" / etc etc, caused by ANY mobile phone.
Think about it. How many countless flights operate - daily - where the passengers stuff their transmitting phones innocently into the overheads, and on short finals there is an orchestra of beeps, bleeps, dingles and dongles as they all acquire their signals and receive incoming text messages, calls, etc? YOU'VE heard them! And this happens DAILY, ALL OVER the world. Yet nothing has fallen out of the sky.
The most annoyances I have ever encountered with mobiles is when someone, ATC, crew, whoever, leaves their phones near the hand-mics and when an incoming signal just happens to coincide with them transmitting, we all hear an annoying "buza-dah-dah-dahzzz" (OK you make the sound look doable in text...). Oh, and same thing goes when wearing headsets when someone beside you gets a call. That also makes faint buzza-dah"...etc etc.
But aircraft systems? Hardly.
Any "real life" - FIRST HAND ACCOUNT - stories out there?? Discount the ones from "friends of co-workers aunts that watched a special on the Beeb a few years back who then wrote a letter-to-the-editor on Roger Bacon's page in Flight Int'l" (bless their souls, just the same). ...and skip the "famous" 747 "depressurizing" story from a few years back, unless that was PROVEN caused by a mobile. Other stories, if they are first-hand accounts, would be entertained, though!
By the way...the background on banning mobile phones goes back to the early days when analogue phones would automatically boost their signals when the towers reception was fading. Being airborne, these phones locked on to many cell-towers at the same time, and caused headaches (signal loss / outages) for users...and the mobile phone companies got rather annoyed at this, so they asked the FCC in the US (where these issues were in the majority, since the cellular-phone system was primarily US-based back then). The FCC approached the FAA, and the FAA placed a blanket "thall shalt not useth thy mobile phone whilst in thy air!"...and the "rule" caught on world-wide.
Some carriers tell you to shut your phones off when boarding right through to engine shut-down on the other end. Others allow the use on the ground - even encourage the use after landing - whilst taxiing - in the case of one US carrier. It's not a consistent situation, and it's brought on by out-of-date "rules".
ALSO - IF CELLULAR PHONES WERE UNSAFE, WHY IS THERE A PUSH TO EQUIP AIRCRAFT WITH CELL-TRANSMITTERS TO ALLOW PASSENGERS TO USE THEIR EXACT SAME "UNSAFE" PHONES AT ALTITUDE?! (yes, I know with a transmitter / receiver on-board, the phone output is very low...but still.)
So, you know my views. Is there any first-hand accounts of mobile-phones GENUINELY causing anomalies, anyone?
...And PLEASE skip the debate of phone usage on aircraft as being a no-no from the view of everyone having to put up with the "YADA YADA YADA" factor. Lets keep this strictly on the debate regarding phone/system interference. Thanks.
Interference?? ...a load of bunk, methinks.
Cheers,
Ray Darr