Raise Your Hand Held if You Use Your Gadget on the Plane

Gadget firmly in hand at 30,000 feet

UPDATE ON THIS POST HERE

 Well in all my years writing for The New York Times, I've never found my email inbox filled with so many disgruntled reader comments first thing in the morning.  One reader claimed to be "dismayed" by my story suggesting that use of portable electronic devices on airplanes could be a safety hazard. Another reader suggested that I was "a liberal left-wing news reporter" too saturated in college with left wing communist views," (a Baptist college in Georgia?) And anyway, didn't I know that the television show MythBusters debunked the effect of EMI on airplane instruments?

Okay, okay, I confess, I've never seen MythBusters, so I went back to David Carson of Boeing, one of the subjects in my surprisingly controversial story which was published in Tuesday's Business section, and apparently was the most viewed story of the day. Had he seen this television program? Apparently he had. So had the other members of the RTCA - the committee advising the FAA on the safety of passenger gadgets on airplanes. They'd all seen the show.

"The reaction was unanimous from pilots to engineers that the 'testing' they did could not have proven anything about the actual operational impact - or lack of it - from portable electronic devices " Not only is it difficult, requiring rigorous testing, David told me, but often, as Doug Hughes, another committee member put it, "EMI leaves no scratch marks". In other words, EMI can wreak havoc and get away without leaving a trace.

Look, there are a lot of folks enthusiastic about bringing portable electronic devices on board, starting with passengers. Who wants to hold back that tide? More than that, lots of businesses are heavily invested in the lucrative retail possibilities of five and one half million people a day becoming captive customers on airliners. Last summer, with a big Ta-Dah!, United Airlines provided Zune digital players on long-haul flights. 

"Connectivity enables an airline to do a lot of things," said Henry Harteveldt, an airline analyst at Forrester Research. "Right now it is an enabler for airlines to be able to sell more things in flight." (For more on this read my Times story here.)

But I digress. The real question, the I'm-scratchin'-my-head-here-Chrissy-but-I-just don't-buy-it question is this; If everyone is ignoring the flight attendants gamely trying to enforce a no cellphone/iPad/Kindle/Gameboy below 10 thousand feet, and nothin's happened yet, what's the problem?

Here's the problem. No less than 10 U.S. airline pilots reported 13 events in which they felt electronic devices affected cockpit instruments. In Atlanta, I am told - though I have not confirmed this myself - two pilots on two separate flights reportedly claimed their communication with air traffic control was garbled due to interference with cell phone conversations on the plane.

People familiar with EMI phenomenon can only wonder what role it played in disasters dating back to the 1960  mid air collision of a TWA and a United Airlines airliner over New York, to a number of more recent events including the crash of a charter flight in New Zealand.

Admittedly, there's a Lot with a capital "L" of uncertainty in this area, but one thing Doug Hughes said is crystal clear and worth repeating. "There are four or five elements in airline safety a key one is the passenger."

At a time when travelers complain the airlines make them feel powerless, this is one area where safety is firmly and literally in their hands.