Study Says Cell Phones Can Interfere With Planes 469
3x37 writes "The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website reports a study by Cargenie Mellon University researchers found that cell phones do interfere with airplane cockpit instruments. The researchers came to this takeaway conclusion: "devices like cell phones 'will, in all likelihood, someday cause an accident by interfering with critical cockpit instruments such as GPS receivers.'""
Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:um what? (Score:3, Interesting)
So what? A lot of people smoke and don't get lung cancer. Your few hours of sporadically monitored GPS performance don't mean anything statistically.
They want you to use the expensive inflight phone
The inflight phones were removed from our fleet years ago.
It annoys others on the plane
True, but you don't need RF studies to prove that.
In the event of an accident you're phone, laptop, cd player, gameboy, etc is a nice loose projectile.
What does this have to do with RF? That's why your supposed to stow your carry-ons for takeoff and landing, the most likely time for an accident.
GPS is just one of many nav instruments in the airplane, and for all but a handful of airplanes and approaches, is not the primary nav signal used for the last few thousand feet (the ILS is.)
Over the years, we've had several anomalous nav indications that were cleared up after flight attendants had all passengers shut down electronic devices. Proof? No - but enough to keep us all suspicious.
Re:um what? (Score:3, Interesting)
IANAEE, but I work for a major manufacturer of aircraft electronics.
Yet another uninformed article (Score:2, Interesting)
A modern jetliner has redundant GPS receivers, fuel systems, hydraulic systems, etc. If a 767 can run out of fuel and the pilot land the aircraft safely using non-powered backup instruments and almost no hydraulic power, which has happened, then some bonehead leaving their cellphone on isn't going to pose much of a problem.