Beware the Inflight WWW
 

Technology is a wonderful thing and as things advance onwards that seems to correspond into things getting smaller. Take for instance the now widely used mobile or cellular phone which was once as large as a standard briefcase and now looks more like a black box of matches!!! This brings me to my point which is this. We all know how how our "pin-striped friends" like to switch on their laptops as soon as the wheels leave the ground so that they can continue to beat their high score in Tetris!! :) And we also know that given the chance or the opportunity they would be on those mobiles as well! I have now discovered a new way for them to get arpund being discovered so please be vigilant in future and ensure that you take notice of whats happening (this does not mean you should stand and watch over their shoulders!!) The new way is to switch on the mobile phone ... hide it and then link it to the laptop and log onto the WWW inflight. This is a major safety risk and as such is very very serious. So please again be extremely careful and vigilant. "May the allowances be everflowing and the night-stops neverending!!" :)

(Deleted - submitted twice my mistake)

[This message has been edited by ExSimGuy (edited 09 December 1999).]

Regarding the use of the lap-tops in flight, I have often wondered about the request before take-off not to use CD players during the flight (although I can't understand why not - perhaps someone can enlighten me?) but most lap-tops these days have CD drives in them.

Should we not use lap-tops with CD drives? or just make sure there is no access (by having no CD in them)? or should lap-tops with CD drives be kept switched off same as CD players?

(ExSimGuy, now frequent self-loading cargo)

ExSim Guys I don't know which carrier you fly with but as far as I am aware and concerned there is no problem with using a CD player inflight. The only restrictions on using electronic goods are during take-off and landing. Like you said people use their CD Rom Drives in their laptops all the time and this isnt a problem. The problem as i said occurs when they use their mobile phones connected to the laptops. Mobile phones are NEVER allowed to be used for the entire time that the engines are switched on!!! Hope this answers your query. :)

Thanks, Gang for being on the ball with some of the smarties, who think it's "clever" to use their electronic wizadry on board.
As a matter of fact, the "ban" period is from entering the aircraft [not from engine start], as it can interfere [seriously] with the navigation equipment [IRS..inertial reference system[s],or GNS...global navigation system[s] ] that the aeroplane uses to take us from A to B.
So please, tell them in the srongest possible way to desist, or to leave the aircraft and do what they've got to do OUTSIDE.
If they continue, please, PLEASE, come up and tell us.
For your info, I've seen the effect of one of these devices on the navigation display...thank goodness we were on the ground when it happened.

Okay, thanks for the update! So I'll make sure I don't use the laptop until after climb-out to start of descent (if it is essential to use it in-flight at all!)

As for the phones, I am aware that they "squawk", looking for a cell, all the time they are switched on and I make sure mine is switched off from the time I leave the gate until I arrive back in the destination airport building - but I have a feeling that the "standard announcement" could be a little inadequate in that it doesn't emphasise enough that "switched off" means just that, not "don't make calls", and I suspect that there are often phones on brief-cases in the overheads or in pockets that are switched on.

Mobile phone vendors could also make this point strongly in the instruction books, but I think the cabin announcements could be more emphatic. (BTW I was surprised to read in the owners' manual of my new car that it also suggested that mobiles should only be sed with "outside antennas" to avoid messing up the electronics in the car!)

I'll certainly continue to keep an eye out for phones in pockets that are "blinking" after the flight is boarded!

Thanks again for the clarification.

First hand on the mobile phone topic,
our B737 experienced a dutch roll (uncontrollable roll side ways like a feather floating to earth), aircraft uncontrollable flight landed at nearest port, pax unloaded, aircraft checked by engineers, find nothing, test flight aircraft, no abnormalities. pax moved on by other aircraft. Only finding, pax with mobile telephone on boarding asked to turn off (had it in his ear) asked to turn off again, finally turned off - we think....... no other explanation for incident. Airline now has strong policy on mobile phones and other electronic equipment.

ExSimGuy was asking about CD players...

Seems to me that different airlines have different policies on passenger use of electronic gizmos - especially CD players.
Quite a few airlines ban CD players (but who's really checking if your laptop has a CD-ROM drive in it?) on the basis - I believe - that the read electronics can generate some nasty little pulses.

A few months back I spoke to a guy who was responsible for defining the relevant safety policy in his airline (no names, no scandal), and his comment was that they decided to ban CD players just to be extra-extra-extra-safe rather than because there was any specific evidence of a danger.

It's easy to see how mobile phones can play tricks on the avionics (and the posts here prove it), but does anyone really have any experience of similar glitches due to use of CD players?

(Incidentally, I've lost count of the times I've seen pax making mobile phone calls while sitting in their seats waiting for pushback. Hope the effects on the nav equipment that Kaptin M mentioned earlier are easy for the flight crew to spot.)

If I remember correctly, QANTAS and possibly Virgin don't allow CD players.

About 5 years ago, a computer magazine aimed at mobile computer users hired a test lab to check out all sorts of consumer equipment aboard aircraft after its readers complained of the electronic restrictions. I do not remember the mag's name and sure wish I had saved the article, but the test results were really scary.

1) FM commercial radios (88-108 mHz in USA) will throw a spurious signal 21.7 mHz higher and lower than what the FM radio is tuned to. As you can see, this can easily put the spurious signal (from the set's Local Oscillator) right into the VOR band. A spur on 116.000 means the pax is listening to 94.3 (116 - 21.7 = 94.3). On a SuperBowl Sunday with folks wanting to hear the big game, the test lab found that each additional FM radio aboard would increase the spurious signal being transmitted.

2) CD audio players were the next biggest source of interference to the NAV systems.

3) I don't remember if the test lab checked out cell fones or not. But the concern over the newer wireless fones with WWW access is certainly justified.

If you have a radio tech friend who has a spectrum analyzer, ask to see it some day. Tune it just to the VHF VOR freq range and turn on a commercial FM radio and see how strong these signals can be! Of course, having a spectrum analyzer in the cockpit is overkill.

Check out http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/pl...6/index_fr.htm for industry efforts to understand this issue. I understand there is even higher concern about this due to Fly By Wire cables running the length of the fuselage, etc.

QANTAS does allow the use of CD players during cruise.

Air Fungus is another no CD airline.
As an ex avionic engineer I can also testify to the serious problems with mobiles. On nightshift at LGW doing full autoland tests on a 737-436 I recieved a mobile call in the middle of the check and I can only say that the results were frightening. An aerobatic approach would have been an understatement and we had to drop all power off the a/c to get it working again.
A friend of mine in flight crew has found a simple answer, usually the hunting sound of a cellphone transmitting can easily be heard on crew headsets at which point he makes a PA announcement along the lines of ' will the pax who is using their mobile phone please turn it off immediately as we are aware where you are located in the aircraft and this is a serious breach of aviation law'
Apparently the resulting scramble in the cabin (especially business class) is like something out of a carry on movie.
One idea might be to provide passengers with a sealable bag in which the boarding card/seat no and offending phone could be put and secured by cabin crew, untill the end of the flight. A few obvious posters in the jettys to the aeroplanes detailing penalties for using phones and the effects might wake a few people up.

I agree about the posters strategically placed, but IMO the important thing to stress is not "don't use them" but "they must be SWITCHED OFF". Many people think that the former means not making calls or answering them but, as most of us know, the GSM is ALWAYS putting out a "ping" to detect the nearest cell and to log onto it. Many phones also adjust their transmit power according to the strength of the received cell and, at 30,000 feet of so, the cell is likely to be pretty weak and the transmitters will be "pinging" flat out.

PA announcements/posters must stress the "switched off" aspect or pax (many of them pretty technically dumb) will happily think "if I'm not making a call, that's okay".

Fly safe!

This is something I'm watching quite closely, as I write a lot about portable electronic gizmos and associated stuff. Some phone manufacturers are putting 'flight mode' options on their kit, which lets you use your mobile with the transmitter disabled -- a good idea in theory, but it must make the job of the cabin crew impossible as how on earth do you tell whether a phone has that mode or whether it's enabled? On the other hand, we're getting towards the time when *everything* will have some sort of transmitter in it... My phone has a calendar, alarm, address book and other nonsense inside which I might well want to use during a flight, and I've seen prototypes of wristwatches with Bluetooth -- that's the new portable wireless network that will end up in anything with a chip.

I can't see the problem going away.

I'd start thinking about putting automatic signal detectors in each seat or, perhaps cheaper, in the overheads. You'd need to have some sort of filter to avoid them triggering when the a/c's own radios were in use and in high RF areas near radars and so on. But I'd guess with the hundreds of thousands of seats out there, the market would be big enough to drive the cost of such a device down to a feasible level.

R

In fact, all the Irish carriers have a no CD rule, it's been imposed by the IAA.

I've seen all sorts of strange effects caused to avionics by Cell phones, and the comments here bear that out very clearly.

Problem is that some of the airlines are now giving out mobiles to the crew so that they can call Ops back at home when there's a delay or problem at an outstation, which is fine till the Captain forgets to switch HIS mobile off before departure, and yes, it's happened :)



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"Irish" Steve

And I thought this thread was going to be about me and eating curries the night before...

WWW

Speaking purely as an amateur, 3 things have puzzled me for some time.

1. The inconsistency in some airlines in banning personal CD players but allowing CD players incorporated into laptops to be used.

2. The inconsistency between airlines where some ban all CD players and others allow all sorts of gizmos/gadgets.

3. Concerning 'phones... They are 2 way devices. Every phone is both a transmitter and a receiver. Isn't it possible to get the same sort of interference from the ground stations? EG in hospitals there are often signs around saying switch off mobile phones as it stops delicate instruments working, yet the some hospitals have phone base stations on their roofs! And what if i accidentally use my phone in a street beside some guy wearing a pacemaker that then plays up! What a thought!

Any ideas?

(btw, don't interpret this as condoning or supporting any use of mobiles in the air)

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I once had a passenger ask if she could call her mum and tell her we were going to be late. I told her if she wanted to get home at all this was not a good idea! think maybe that was a bit harsh??? We were over the antarctic at the time, so it would have been kinda cool to see if we had coverage...... but naaaaa wasn't THAT interested

In some of the locations that I work we have a 'switch off' mobile phones rule. As it interferes with the radio and othre equipment nearby. Not new news, but we recently investigated putting in a loop around the doorway to detect the presence of mobile phones. We apprached Vodaphone, Cellnet and co and talked through our problem with their tech people. The answer we got was that each type of phone (Orange, 1-2-1, Voda etc) all use slightly different frequencies and that every 20 minutes or so they perform a call home, where they transmit their presence and detect the nearest cell. During the 20 minute gap unless they are called or transmit they are silent and are in listen mode.
This is what makes them difficult to trace - different frequecies and a silent period.
We also investigated the possibility of detecting the presence of circuits, this is the best option, but price put us off.
As somebody said earlier the 'best' method is to listen for that familiar interference on the r/t during pre-flight and taxi, then if you hear it slam on the brakes and give everybody the 3rd degree.

On my last flight I walked past a passenger who was quite happily playing some little computer game on her mobile phone. She seemed quite surprised that "mobile phones must be switched off at all times" means not used at all...
Go figure!

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"Work is the Curse of the Drinking Classes"
Oscar Wilde

StickyB

Like you I am guessing here but I suspect the reason that the cell base stations and rooftop pager transmitters are (hopefull!) several hundred feet away even if you are flying right over the top of them.

The received signal strenght from a transmitter diminishes as the SQUARE of the distance. So even a relatively powerful cell transmitter would be quite a weak signal by the time it reaches the aircraft flying overhead.

Your cellphone, stowed in your briefcase in the overhead, could be within inches of the wiring between the flight deck and aircraft controls at the rear (the quite important ones that make the aircraft go up an down!!)

As I said earlier, pax really must be made aware that "off" means "OFF" !

know all about the mobile phone thang.....always encountering obnoxious pax who act like children when asked to turn them off...and thats on a 30 min flight!!!

I fly SAA and BA/COMAIR in the Southern African region as self loading cargo.
The above do not allow cd players at any time,allow laptops in cruise flight, but are quite causual about cellphones PRIOR to start up. I agree that cabin announcements should be modified and strengthened about switch off BEFORE you even enter the cabin. I intend to take this up the the Aircrew on the next flight with both airlines and see what they have been told is policy.

Mobile Phones, the Italians love them, I've never seen a Country like it. And I really pity the Cabin Crew on an internal Flight, I've seen the F/A's trying to stop more than one passenger talking on the phone during the Flight never mind switching it off. The afore mentioned passenger needed telling more than once!!!!.

But I must say the Airlines need to tell the Self Loading Cargo the reasons that they are being asked to turn the phone off, as many people dont understand why they need to turn them off.

Posters at the gate/airbridge are a great idea perhaps the Airlines and Airports should get together on this one, sooner rather than later as Mobile Phones arn't going to go away.

The poster idea would certainly be the cheapest option.

For those that think using a mobile before pushback is ok, consider this -

On a short turnround the self loading cargo may be on board whilst the aircraft is being refuelled. It is theoretically possible for a mobile phone to cause a spark when transmitting or recieving and with that much fuel around does anyone want to test the theory!!

The only guaranteed way to ensure all phones are OFF is to remove them from the hands of untrustworthy pax before boarding and hand them back after the flight.

here, here banana!!

Still don't understand why CD drives are considered a hazard (by some airlines) but regarding phones, there is now a small device (available via the net) that cuts the phone dead. Great fun for walking around with, but maybe could be adopted for business class? Range is about 20' so seems ok for that

Maybe not listening to a cd player in the initial and final stages of flight might, i say again , might, be so you could hear any safety announcments.........

Regarding the mobile phones........if cabin crew offer to stow the jackets and coats of pax, then why not keep the mobile battery and return it after landing, just like the jackets.

When pax can remember to give coats, I am sure they can be reminded to part with their mobile phone batteries for the duration of flight. This will even ensure those cases where passengers have "genuinely" forgotten to switch off their phones

Any comments ;)

CD players are bad because the digital scan rate they use to pick up the information off the disk is in the megahertz band.

On the subject of sensing phone transmissions, I've seen a device thats basically a light in a pen that flashes when a digital phone carrier signal is recieved. It was small enough to be fitted in the end of a functioning pen - perhaps the suggestion to fit sensors is a good one.

The thing about the CD players being banned but CD-ROM drives in laptops being allowed is a matter of headphone leads. You'll also find a ban on external mice on laptops, for the same reason.

What happens inside a CD player/ROM drive is that lots of energy is used at radio frequencies -- not normally directly on the aviation or nav bands, but with significant amounts of spillover there nonetheless. A digital signal at 1MHz will also have stuff going on at 2MHz, 3MHz... all the multiples of the basic frequency, in fact. Normally, this is shielded by the case and doesn't escape -- this is a condition of modern electronic equipment passing various interference regulations.

If you plug a lead in, though, it acts as an antenna and can couple the signals inside the case to the outside world. Headphone and mouse leads do this -- in theory, this shouldn't happen and there should be components in the CD that block the signals before the headphone/mouse socket, but in practice it's not so clear cut.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that making some form of hand-held/seatback sensor for emission detection would be very useful. If I could make one for £500 or so, would any airline buy it?

R

Just curious, as a self-loader I have always been annoyed by the other cargo who insist onleaving the phones on. What steps are best to do something about it?

"Flight Attendant: Police, Babysitter or Secret Cell-Phone Snuffer?"....just a few comments regarding "posters, bells and whistles" regarding people and their phones.
1)Cell phones can be used up until 5 minutes before departure on American Airlines.
2) Flight attendants (at AA) are not paid (except "per diem") until after the airplane door closes. Unfortunately, the most hectic part of the job is often before that moment.
I think that the new rule (see #1, above)helps to pacify the cell-phone addicts, while not completely revoking their privelege at what can be the most frustrating moments..(i.e.:delays, etc.)
3)Do you REALLY believe that more announcements, posters, bells, and seat-pocket-magazine reading materials will help me to encourage a flight full of modern society to obey rules?
Consider this:
The door to the lav says "push".
The passenger pulls.
Here's an even better example:
"Fasten your seat belt."
The seatbelt exists...surely the passenger sees it or sits on it.
The flight attendant says "fasten it" before the airplane door closes.
The captain turns the "fasten seatbelt" sign on...(complete with 2 hands and belt picture), AND a bell rings at the same time.
It's embroidered on the back of the headrest directly in front of you.
It's written on the safety briefing card, and in the in-flight magazine. In many languages.
The agent reminds of it before the door is closed.
THEN......they even show you HOW to do it.

I know you've gotta be getting my point...Invariably, LOTS of grown, sober, sane men and women STILL don't do it.
Even though they've heard all the reasons.
Rules don't apply, because if they're followed, passengers have a tougher time sueing! (kidding) (kind of)

One more unnumbered point: AA does offer "approved" in-flight phones, for those desperate to phone. (Does anyone know why they're approved?)

Please wear your seatbelt and pack your phone in your checked luggage!

Did you know that systems are now being developed to allow the use of mobiles on board aircraft? They achieve this by creating a 'micro cell' inside the aircraft itself. I thought the idea was to ban the use of these things on board, not encourage it!

I agree with "up2late".
People are just obnoxious and self-centred.
You can give them the information and the resources, and they will still do only as they please. The idea of keeping the batteries (as in the coats) is a really good idea. Maybe a sticker placed on their boarding pass when a mobile phone is detected in their on-board luggage (when going through X-ray/security). This way, when they board, we can see that they have a mobile on them. That will surely screw all those b*****ds that hide their phones for later use!
*feeling more and like a policewoman/babysitter everyday*

I agree with "up2late".
People are just obnoxious and self-centred.
You can give them the information and the resources, and they will still do only as they please. The idea of keeping the batteries (as in the coats) is a really good idea. Maybe a sticker placed on their boarding pass when a mobile phone is detected in their on-board luggage (when going through X-ray/security). This way, when they board, we can see that they have a mobile on them. That will surely screw all those b*****ds that hide their phones for later use!
*feeling more and like a policewoman/babysitter everyday*

Collecting mobile phone batteries with jackets sounds like a good idea, but we already have enough to do in business class before takeoff...collect jackets, hand out newspapers, preflight drinks...and the whole boarding procedure only takes 15 mins.

Also what about economy passengers? They have mobile phones too. Would you like to collect 220 batteries before takeoff and then hand them back at top of descent? On a 1 hour flight this would be impossible.

I find that people often use their mobile phone whilst the aircraft is taxiing. They get really annoyed when they are told to turn it off. I think it is something that the airlines should address, maybe if they charged a frequent flier with engangering the safety of an aircraft he would think twice about doing it again. Unfortunately the more likely scenario is that he would complain that the F/A was rude to him when she told him to turn his phone off. The company would send a letter of apology and something to compensate him.....

Thank's for bringing up such an important issue for us cabin crew.
In the airline I work for we don't permit the use of any eletronic equipment during take-of ,approach and landing ,this includes ,lap-top's .videocam etc...
CD's and mobile's must be switched off inside the acft.
I allready had some bad experiences with electronic interferece whith the acft. systems
(I fly on Airbuse's and they give us more interference problems than Boeing's... any coment's on that??)
;)


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"Cabin Crew does it better"

[This message has been edited by latin sky (edited 24 February 2000).]

[This message has been edited by latin sky (edited 24 February 2000).]