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Old 26th Apr 2013, 20:07
  #44 (permalink)  
tommoutrie
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: london, UK
Age: 57
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The problem isn't that modern mobile phones cause modern aircraft systems to go bananas. The problem is that when a bunch of people are yabbering away on their phones they are not receptive to instructions from crew members. The general hubub and babble means that even people not on their phones don't listen either. Belts don't get put on, emergence briefs aren't listened to and the result is a herd of monkeys that don't act properly in the event of an emergency. Old analogue phones did cause problems - the transmission power of an old analogue phone was up to 4 watts and I still have a panasonic in the garage that has an output power of 4 watts. But modern digital phones transmit up to 0.5w and to preserve battery life usually transmit about a tenth of that. So other than the characteristic polling noise that is usually caused by me leaving my own phone on in the cockpit I find it hard to believe that serious technical problems can be caused by phones being switched on.

But in the event of needing to evacuate an aircraft in a hurry I can well imagine that having a significant proportion of them yabbering away to their mistresses could cause a dangerous delay. Getting the folks in the back to sit still and be alert to messages is a good idea.

The shape of a mobile phone mast transciever means that the beam is horizontally polarised and doesnt really work over a couple of thousand feet in most circumstances. So the polling for a cell by a phone increases dramatically once at height. Which runs down the battery and is bloody annoying if it causes radio interference (but to be fair, the only phone thats ever caused that on an aircraft I've been flying is my own).

Devices exist which detect a polling phone. If it was a problem the crew would sweep the cabin before take off. They don't, and there's the clue.
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