FAA to Allow Airlines to Expand Use of Personal Electronics

[strake]

FAA to Allow Airlines to Expand Use of Personal Electronics (http://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=15254)

For better or worse, the tide of progress can't be resisted.

[Basil]

I've now read through that. What has changed?

[strake]

I think it means people will still do what they have been doing for years furtively- but now it's legal... :E

[TightSlot]

The most important part of the change for the travelling public will be that the use of PED's in Flight Mode will be permitted gate-to-gate (i.e. during Take-Off and Landing).

This process will take a short period of time to be implemented.








Note 1: Mobile/Cell Phone calls are not permitted at any time. This represents an outrageous restriction of the human rights of the travelling public and must be ignored whenever possible. The use of abuse, foul language and threatening behaviour towards other human beings on board has been approved under these circumstances.

Note 2: The FAA has advised that all future Safety protocols, amendments and revisions will be resolved under a new procedure known as Crowd-sourced Regulatory Airline Procedures. Under this process, an airline passenger will ignore a random safety instruction or procedure, and if He/She survives the flight without incident, this will be taken as proof absolute that the procedure may be safely ignored and/or amended. Amendments will be distributed via Blog and Late Night With Letterman.

[ExXB]

Actually TightSlot, Mobile/Cell phone use will be permitted on airlines providing a wifi connection for that purpose. Some airlines limit that to text messages, other airlines permit audio as well - EK for example.

But, the charge for connecting and using a cell-phone in flight is usury, just like in the days when you had seat-back telephones. It's just like roaming charges, expensive and difficult to learn in advance how much they are going to scr*w you over for.

The good news is that arguments on if it is OK to read my Kindle or not will now disappear.

[TightSlot]

Agree absolutely about the Kindle. I thought that there was an FAA restriction on mobile calls for security reasons? Is this incorrect?

[ExXB]

AFAIK it is a FCC (communications) restrictions that prohibit use of cell phones in flight. This, apparently, is due to the problems with phones trying to connect to cells towers on the ground, and the problems that causes with ground networks.

Cell phones connecting to an onboard picocell don't try and connect to ground networks meaning the FCC issue doesn't occur on aircraft so configured.

EK, and a couple of others, have allowed full use of cellular telephones for a couple of years now, but they had to be turned off before entering US airspace.

Due to the cost of using such networks we have seen prudent usage of such facilities, and I have yet to hear any complaints about the guy in the next seat screaming "Honey, I'm on the plane".