Sunday, June 13, 2004
Pacemakers of doom
So, there are tons of little annoyances about flying. (George Carlin does a fantastic routine about this. I'd love to rip him off and take the credit here, but I'll resist the urge.) I mentioned earlier how frustrating it is when people are slower than dirt deplaning, and, I suppose, enplaning. (That's getting off and on the plane, for you laypeople.) One thing that I've always found silly is the need to turn off all electrical devices when the plane is taking off and landing. Now, maybe I'm just ignorant, but it would seem to me that this is asinine. I do understand that recently, more and more devices have wireless capabilities, and it just might be possible for their signals to interfere with the plane's navigation signals. Maybe. But I doubt it. Maybe it's not worth taking the risk. However, this is not a new thing. I remember when I was younger, and fun electronic toys simply consisted of a small blinking light and frequent beeping. Even then, they made you turn electronic devices off. Maybe they just hadn't grasped the mystical voodoo behind such things, and thought that the Gods of Electricity would be angered if the toys weren't shut off, so as a small sacrifice to them, they were shut off in order to increase the likelihood of a safe flight. It seems things haven't changed. But clearly, it really makes no difference - or, put it this way - I've never heard of a flight on which it has made a difference. I'll forget to turn something off, and my flights haven't yet crashed. And I'm sure there are people less cognizant of the electrical devices they own ("You mean this Game Boy is ELECTRONIC?! What will they think of next?") than I am, so this must happen many, many times a day, on many different flights. Furthermore, the simple fact is that you just can't shut off all of your devices, even if you try. What if people have pacemakers? Artificial limbs? What if they have embedded radio tags in their brain, implanted by the government to track their every move? There are plenty of such people (even the last kind - don't try to deny it), but I don't see planes falling out of the sky. I don't see them getting lost in the clouds because their navigational abilities have been crippled by some elderly gentleman with a heart problem. (Right, because they're lost in the clouds, so I can't see them? Well, we'd likely hear about such occurrences on the news, I would hope.) So it's all BS. Just let me us my Palm Pilot while we're taking off. That's all I ask.
Comments:
I also find this interesting that they insist on not having things on like laptops and mp3 players. I think some of it is probably due to safety in that they don't want heavy things like laptops out from storage, in case there's a rough landing/takeoff, sudden turbulence, and emergency of some kind, etc., and the plane is jolted and all this crap goes flying around, hitting little children in the eye. I bet they also want people to be able to evacuate as easily as possible should the need arise, and the less crap they have out, the better. Just some guesses... If not of that is the case, though, I agree that it's annoying to have to go through that. I suppose somebody could have a hand held radio made for general aviation pilots (as a backup radio in case the one in the plane fails), and if this person was allowed to use that, he could easily listen in to the discussion the pilots had with air traffic control, and just as easily transmit on that frequency so as to disrupt the communications. Of course, anybody could do that just by sitting in the parking lot with such a radio (only a few hundred dollars, at most, and the size of a walkie-talkie), but maybe there's some worry that they would be more of a threat if they could do it on the plane...and since it would be very difficult to know exactly what kind of electronic device people are using, the only practical way to prevent such a problem is to ban all of them....that's the best I can think of....
-Dave Shear
-Dave Shear
# posted by 
: June 16, 2004 at 11:41 PM
: June 16, 2004 at 11:41 PM
You know, I think this is less a case of people wanting to be extra careful, and ban anything that might interfere, and more a case of people not understanding electronic things. Some bigwig, either with each airline, or maybe with the FAA, heard somewhere that there are a lot of transmitters in electronic devices, or maybe he had his speakers too close to his computer monitor, and therefore decided that the threat of interference was just too great, so he made this silly decree. That's my theory, anyways.
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