Amy you should see the South Park episode where Mr. Garrison gets so angry at the airline companies he builds his own transportation device. Only because he is gay and into BDSM it is manuevered by a dildo in your mouth and a dildo up your ass. At first people are hesitant until they can't take the airlines anymore and concede.

At the end of the episode a customer figures out that the dildos aren't necessary and Mr.Garrison asks:

"Yeah of course not, but why would anyone want to take them out?"

Per NYT: Meanwhile, there are good reasons for restricting calls, not least of which is preserving peace and quiet on planes, which are increasingly flying at or near capacity thanks to multiple airline mergers in recent years.

Whenever I read something like that, I always assume it's from someone who hates rubbing elbows with commoners.

The goverments only concern should be 'will it cause airplanes to fall from the sky?'

No?

Then there is no reason to outlaw it, let airlines choose

If you think that allowing a passenger to escape the environment into their phone is a good idea, you've never had to serve one in a sandwich line, much less get them to hang up and pay attention as a flight attendant.

I was first on the scene to a traffic accident in which the woman's conversation was more important than missing the semi turning in front of her. She was talking to her own father at the time, whom she had just left in the church parking lot down the street.

She never touched the brakes. Fortunately, she was only doing about 30 on contact.

For cell phone users: do you hate your family so much that you want them to hear you die in traffic because you were talking to them?

-----

The cell phone is the BEST way to see how self-centered a person can be.

"If you think that allowing a passenger to escape the environment into their phone is a good idea, you've never had to serve one in a sandwich line, much less get them to hang up and pay attention as a flight attendant."

So? Don't serve them the fucking sandwich. Last I checked food service wasn't required to keep the damn plane up in the air, and people don't pay attention to the flight attendant briefings because they are background noise. A survivable plane crash, with an evacuation, is a once in a blue moon kind of thing.

Southwest has wifi on most their flights now, which means, those of us with iPhones and iPads or Skype have phone service.
I just prefer to text when I am in public places.

Southwest has wifi on most their flights now, which means, those of us with iPhones and iPads or Skype have phone service.

Southwest doesn't allow Skype-type VOIP services, thank God.

"In order to provide a top-notch WiFi experience, we limit access to certain high bandwidth applications and websites, including Netflix, HBO Go, and VoIP."

"In order to provide a top-notch WiFi experience, we limit access to certain high bandwidth applications and websites, including Netflix, HBO Go, and VoIP."

Posted by: Kevin at August 9, 2014 9:

VoIP? You do know what that is, don't you?

http://www.ehow.com/info_8401039_voip-work.html

"There is no compelling reason to allow cellphone calls on planes other than to provide airlines with another source of revenue."

What reason does he think an airline would find more compelling than that?

Isab, apparently you haven't found JACDEC, and you haven't noticed that you have to have the ability to get passenger attention at once.
And there we have it: the "what I'm doing is important" crowd has weighed in.

How did those people who were supposedly hijacked on 9/11 manage to make cell phone calls, while airborne?

Jefe: It's quite possible to make cell calls while airborne. There are two reasons that airlines originally banned it: (1) there were a lot of concerns about the effects of the phone transmitters on aircraft avionics, and (2) the cell system was designed on the assumption that users are on or near the ground, and a given phone will not be visible in more than two or three cells at a given time. Phones in the air, visible in many cells at once, caused a lot of problems for the system and resulted in other users getting calls dropped and no-service statuses. (This was a huge problem back in the days of the old AMPS systems, which had a very limited number of cell channels available.)

Since then, upgraded avionics have pretty well eliminated the concerns about electromagnetic interference. And cell system routing algorithms have been redesigned to minimize the effects of phones in the air on the system. So the two technical objections are now mostly gone.