I think the rule to shut down electronic devices is utterly ridiculous. As you said, at least 100 people per plane are leaving their devices on.

If electronic equipment being on (on take off and landing, only!) really caused interference, then there would be no need for security checks as the terrorists could simply bring a plane down by turning on their cell phones.

Why can't the FAA just admit that none of this is any big deal?

There is some thought that the rule forbidding devices during takeoff and landing was made to ensure that passengers paid attention. The F.A.A. has never claimed this.

It is true, nonetheless.

Whether a bunch of people are leaving the devices on is beside the point, which is stopping people engaging in activities that could make it difficult for flight attendants to get quickly get passengers' attention.

So, even though reading from a Kindle is really no different than reading from a book, reading from a Kindle while listening to music from a Kindle is.

Of course telling people to shut down their devices does not achieve that end, but it does provide an easily enforced line between easily interrupted activities -- reading -- and those far harder to interrupt -- watching a movie while wearing noise cancelling headphones.

Also, there is the matter of having unsecured electronic devices flying about the cabin.

Speaking more technically, the iPad, unlike the rest of the plethora of electronic devices, has gone through the FAA's TSO process, which means its particular RF emissions have been found to be compatible with aircraft electronics.

Additionally, to be able to use the iPad below 10,000 feet, an airline (SFAIK, at this point only Alaska and United) must have a specifically approved installation, standard operating procedures, and aircrew training.

Since my airline doesn't have a TSO for the iPad, I can no more fire one up below 10,000 feet than can passengers, even though it can do just as good a job displaying navigation information as our currently installed equipment.

The FAA's processes in this regard are slow and often bloody minded, which is a long way of saying conservative, and has the same justification as its political counterpart.

In aviation, the devil you know is far better than the one you don't.

Those of you clamoring to use your gadgets on takeoff and landing are ignorant.

I hope I offended you.

Because the real danger is twofold:

1) You won't pay any attention to emergency announcements;

2) Your device becomes a missile in a crash.

Don't believe me? Go Ask The Pilot, read Patrick Smith's many columns on how difficult it is to do anything with a passenger but make them mad.

You already know you cannot do two things at once well, like talk on a cell phone and chew gum. Shut up, turn your shit off and sit there for ten minutes. And don't act like you're being forced to sit in the corner for a "time out" - even though you could use it.

Your device becomes a missile in a crash.

And my hard cover copy of War and Peace does not?

I'd far rather be hit by that than by my iPad.

Patrick Smith is perhaps the only think on Salon worth reading. His piece on the potential for interference and other reasons why electronic devices nened to be turned off here.

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/13/what_alec_baldwin_doesnt_know_about_air_travel/singleton/

And my hard cover copy of War and Peace does not?

Smith addresses this as well. The lines are drawn at electronic devices, but not books because it makes them clearer and easier to enforce (he also notes that this leads to the rules seeming arbitrary with regard to some devices).

Really Darth Aggie, how many passengers are reading Russian literature compared to how many bring laptops, gameboys, DVD playes, etc?

The FAA requires a sterile cockpit below 10,000 feet. That means the pilots are to only focus on activities related to flying the aircraft. They aren't even supposed to talk about last night's football game until 10,001 feet. Statistically if anything bad is going to happen during a flight it is far, far more likely to happen at takeoff or landing than it is in mid flight. And as much as airplanes are treated like sky buses by the traveling public, the fact remains that they aren't. The odds are small but when the crew needs to give instructions to the passengers, the passengers need to listen. Jeff is right, it is much easier to get someone's attention from a book or magazine than it is an iPod or DVD player.

Incidents have been increasingly rare in the past ten years. But when something like the Miracle on the Hudson occurs, high situational awareness among the passengers as well as the flight crew is what helps everyone get out alive.

Darth, think about this - because you haven't yet.

You're trying to excuse one hazard by citing another. WTF?

Rad, quit being a troll.

We are required to turn off the devices, not stow them away. We are also allowed to have them out and in use at the most dangerous point, a height that could take the plane to near terminal velocity ... IE: we are dead either way.

We are required to turn off the devices, not stow them away

No, they're luggage. They are supposed to be stowed.

1) You won't pay any attention to emergency announcements;

No one does anyway

"We are also allowed to have them out and in use at the most dangerous point, a height that could take the plane to near terminal velocity ... IE: we are dead either way."

What is it with the "two wrongs" fallacy that everybody has to use it? This one even uses "appeal to consequences", though inverted.

No, dammit, takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts of flying, period. Look it up. Ask a pilot.

And put your shit away and listen for ten minutes. Just ten minutes off the nipple, think you can survive?

Actually, you can learn a lot about aircraft just by watching the takeoff carefully.

Irony: that fans of the author of "I See Rude People" would put their own convenience above that of helping the flight attendants do their job.

Just, wow.

But what if I'm using my new iBle?

http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/an-exciting-new-bible/

"Yet pilots with iPads will be enclosed in the cockpit just a few inches from critical aviation equipment"

Doesn't Mr Bilton realize that all that 'critical' aviation equipment has to actually be connected to stuff all over the plane for it to do anything useful? That involves huge amounts of wiring criss-crossing the whole length of the fuselage. Every single instrument in the cockpit is just wired to something elsewhere in the plane. The shielding parameters may be different in the cockpit than at any other random point. An instrument displaying the aileron status might be better shielded in the cockpit, but it has to actually be connected to the damn ailerons, and the shielding may be less efficient elsewhere.

Also, the types of devices allowed by the pilots are limited and can be restricted to known 'safe' devices (as Jeff points out, the iPad "has gone through the FAA's TSO process"), while amongst the passengers some might have iPads but others might have cheap crappy tablets that can cause interference - what are you going to do, have the crew learn which of the many thousands of devices out there are safe and approved and which are not safe and go around to every single passenger on an individual basis and say "yours is OK, yours is not"? No, that is completely ludicrous, as Rad points out, it's just ten or twenty minutes, it's simpler to just say 'shut the things off please'.

Also there is only a very limited number of pilots - e.g. that's two or three devices perhaps. There is a difference between two or three devices transmitting, and (up to) 800 or so devices all transmitting at the same time. 800 devices transmitting at 2W simultaneously becomes 1600W worth of interference. Two iPads transmitting at 2W become 4W of interference. That's quite a difference.

Another difference is that you know the pilot's iPad, is an actual iPad. A terrorist could theoretically open electronic devices like iPads, and convert the internals - e.g. put in a more powerful transmitter, designed to interfere with the electronics. The screeners wouldn't know an internally modified device from a bar of soap, and it would look the same from the outside.

And Rad is also right that takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts of a flight.

PS a pilot I worked with once told me that devices like cellphones can also cause interference with ground communications - e.g. communications between pilot and air traffic control.

Wikipedia has an interesting article on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft

Seems the jury is out on 'absolute proof' of a serious risk, but it sounds like there may also be an element of prudence in the restrictions on electronic devices, i.e. a 'better safe than sorry' approach. Which makes sense.

"I can't think of anything bad that could happen, so let me do what I want!"

It's not so simple. There are reasons why you're supposed to shut down emissions, and there are ways you can (safely) do these things.

And you'd be shocked at how many crashes are due to something almost innocuous. Not to mention how many "incidents".

The FAA and the airlines are paranoid, sometimes stupidly so, but you need to have a far better understanding of How A Plane (and avionics) works than most who decry the 'stupidity'.

You've been able to use a cellphone for years on airliners. If the phone was qualified and certified.

Was yours? Probably not, because to get it qualified, the airline would need to have it, the exact production block #, test it in many flight and simulated configurations, for each of the models of airplanes they'd like to certify it in.
Any changes would require less rigorous, but still thorough testing.

Oh, wait, you got revision 8c of the phone? That's got a totally different transmitter, it's not allowed.

I've been following the saga of a guy who is building new cowlings for a sort of light sport airplane. The cowling isn't "structural", the plane can fly without it. His is being built to well over 150% of the requirements of the original. He's had to prove that it will stay together at 120% Vne - that is, they had to dive a plane past the speed that the FAA says you are not allowed to exceed on the airframe, and other insanity. He's something like $200k in the hole for development and testing, and every so often after the flight test, they'd call and say "Oh, what's the [previously unasked for values of a measurement] in [previously unasked for flight regime]."

That's nuts. But OTOH, browsing http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/index.aspx can give you some real eye-openers. Or seeing the result of things that WERE tested heavily, but something still slipped through.

There's a lot of reasons I'm probably going to build the plane that I end up owning, and it has to do a lot with the ridiculous crap that you have to put up with to be legal with a certified airplane.

But that's me flying it. When you're talking about flying airliners, with hundreds of people, I'm far less sanguine. If you were to ask me to think of me, as OWNING a airline, and sending people out, and being responsible for their safety.. Oh, hell no.

Amy, you asked "Do Pilots' iPads Have That Special Somethin'-Somethin'?" and yes, they do. They've been tested and examined, and they, in that position, in that configuration, weren't shown to cause a problem.

building new cowlings for a sort of light sport airplane.

Self-edit, sorry, not "Light Sport", that means something different today.

A "light" plane, certified almost 40 years ago. ("Grumman" Tiger, to be very specific.)