Comments on: When Airplane Mode Isn’t

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 03:02:49 +0000

because navigation interference is a great big crock of shit that the airline industry has foisted on us in the belief that we’re stupid enough to believe them. Can anyone point to a single instance of airplane navigation interference caused by a personal electronic device? No, because over the course of millions of flights every year for the last 2 decades it hasn’t happened.

More on point, airplane mode means the radio is turned off dumb ass.

By: Ray

Ray — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 02:50:21 +0000

why didn’t you just turn it off. what if every jerk that saw you decided not to turn of there electronics and inadvertantly cased navagation interferance with the airplane. don’t think of your self thik of others

By: vinnie mirchandani

vinnie mirchandani — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:19:47 +0000

I saw a guy with a “I wrote the Kama Sutra” T-Shirt on a flight recently

I am pretty sure it was not Southwest -)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/5192745.html

By: vinnie mirchandani

vinnie mirchandani — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:29:34 +0000

Try GPS on flights…

wide range of experiences from my various flights – if I get a window I till tether my GPS chip to my laptop and watch progress, altitude etc on MS Streets and Trips. On ground the chip goes into a bluetooth tramsitter and talks to navigation sw on my PDA.

Southwest has no problems. I asked a pilot and he said they tried 20 different GPS gadgets and decided they caused no interference. Couple of them have kiddded with me and said can we use yours – it’s more accurate than the one in the cockpit -)

Alaska and others will not allow it – airline magazine specifically bans them.

Delta magazine is silent and most flights on it no one has bothered me. But one flight attendant brought her fat, red, ops manual and showed me fine print. “Tethered” GPS units not allowed. If I had a standalone Garmin it would be ok. As I got off the flight, the pilot scolded me. When I told him Southwest allowed it, he said he would report SW to the FAA. I was afraid to tell him his own Delta pilot colleagues had on other flights allowed it.

FAA says it has no jurisdication on the matter – it’s individual airline decision.

In the end the pilot is the ship of the captain, and I will respect his decision (I would escalate about the attendant), especially if fellow passengers are nervous about a gadget, but wish the airline industry had clearer guidelines about phones, MP3, GPS…

By: Paul J.

Paul J. — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 08:47:32 +0000

Jeff, I’ve been having this happen to me for so long, on multiple airlines. It all started with I believe my Ericsson R380 which was the first phone I had with airplane mode (I think…can’t remember exactly which model). Imagine early days when airline attendants didn’t even know Blackberry’s existed what their reaction to my taking my phone out mid-flight led to. I was regularly “threatened”. I gave up arguing and simply shut it off. This has significantly trailed off though during the years. At the same time, nowadays I see many people actually not going into flight mode and simply telling the attendant that they are. I can understand trying to squeeze in as much mailing and surfing as possible but is it really such a problem to shut off a phone completely for take-off and landing? Again, this is take-off and landing. If they are ignorant of technology and want you to shut off your iPhone completely during the flight then it’s just annoying but I could see this ending soon as the attendants do become a bit more tech savvy. Not everyone out there is as interested in technology as we tend to be. The whole “safety” argument though is complete BS…here I totally agree.

By: Jackie Danicki

Jackie Danicki — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:41:00 +0000

You know, I may be a contrary so-and-so, but I’d happily let them detain me over their own stupidity. It would make a good blog post and possibly a good lawsuit.

Seriously, if you knock up some of those t-shirts on Café Press, I’m buying one.

By: Deva Hazarika

Deva Hazarika — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:51:15 +0000

What does the iphone display to indicate airplane mode? My phone says “Airplane Mode is ON” and has a big red X next to the bars. Does the iphone have something similar?

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:51:11 +0000

That happened to me so many times with my Nokia E70 (a cell phone with airplane mode) that I just stopped trying. With the iphone, I would image there is a very simple solution. Say it is the ipod touch! If they do get ‘airplane mode’ they probably couldn’t tell the difference between the phone and touch.