Let the punishment fit the crime!

[pentona]

Regarding the use of cel phones on board commercial aircraft, here is a reason that I hadn't heard before and it makes far more sense; comes from the Captain of a 777:

Think about this one, because this is a far bigger issue! So say I am flying you and your wife and kids on my 777 from LAX to ATL, so you can go visit grandma, or what ever you are doing. As we are descending into ATL, half of the possible 269 passengers on the plane fire up the old Iphone and then call home to tell whoever that they will be landing soon. That's roughly 135 cell phones pinging a couple of towers in the immediate ATL area all at once. Most of which will be trying to access the same tower at the SAME time!!! Now say that those 135 people and the 135 from the aircraft in front of us and the same with the one behind us are trying to do the same thing. Make a long story short, It can overwhelm the local network near the airport and cause failure, which can cause emergency calls to fail as well. Not to mention it #### off the cell phone carriers severely. This is truly the reason why the ban was enacted, because the cell phone carriers were having problems billing people who were using phones on flights. This was because we are doing 500+ Mph and you are skipping between towers so quickly, their computer system cannot tell if you were roaming or not!!

[KL3-Something]

I could kinda see the tower skipping argument(kinda).

But what difference does it make if those 139 people are calling as they near the airport in the plane or if they make that call from the nearby terminal?

[pentona]

I could kinda see the tower skipping argument(kinda).

But what difference does it make if those 139 people are calling as they near the airport in the plane or if they make that call from the nearby terminal?

I think that 139 people using the same tower might work (not all would be on the same company of course) but that same amount pinging multiple towers while in the air could indeed cause problems. I'm no expert but it sounds logical. I don't think the phones would target only ONE tower while flying at altitude and speed. This is slightly off topic as we were talking about using cels in cars but its still very interesting.

[Woodenhead]

You need at least 10 times that amount to even start to consider overwhelming the network.

[underscore]

Regarding the use of cel phones on board commercial aircraft, here is a reason that I hadn't heard before and it makes far more sense; comes from the Captain of a 777:

Think about this one, because this is a far bigger issue! So say I am flying you and your wife and kids on my 777 from LAX to ATL, so you can go visit grandma, or what ever you are doing. As we are descending into ATL, half of the possible 269 passengers on the plane fire up the old Iphone and then call home to tell whoever that they will be landing soon. That's roughly 135 cell phones pinging a couple of towers in the immediate ATL area all at once. Most of which will be trying to access the same tower at the SAME time!!! Now say that those 135 people and the 135 from the aircraft in front of us and the same with the one behind us are trying to do the same thing. Make a long story short, It can overwhelm the local network near the airport and cause failure, which can cause emergency calls to fail as well. Not to mention it #### off the cell phone carriers severely.

This makes no sense, ignoring the numbers that I'm pretty sure are too low to impact a network, how is that any different from everyone turning on their phones at the exact same time right after landing? As soon as the flight attendant says "you may now turn on your cell phones" there's potentially a few hundred phones getting taken off airplane mode.

This is truly the reason why the ban was enacted, because the cell phone carriers were having problems billing people who were using phones on flights. This was because we are doing 500+ Mph and you are skipping between towers so quickly, their computer system cannot tell if you were roaming or not!!

This part kind of makes sense, except they tell you to turn off all transmit/receive functions. My laptops bluetooth/wifi connects aren't able to mess up a plane, so why make me switch it off?

[HoboJo]

That's roughly 135 cell phones pinging a couple of towers in the immediate ATL area all at once

I am certain that cell phone frequencies and airline radio communications are unrelated. Planes have been around for a while now.

Please don't make me list all the sources for this.

As for a few thousand calls simultaneously.... also not a problem.

[HoboJo]

I *think (and for this I have few sources) that there is a security issue with granting GPS and cell service to devices at speed. (High speed)

That is, the military does not want "jo blow" or even "hobo jo" to have those capabilities in their homemade rockets.

[rvrepairnut]

Regarding the use of cel phones on board commercial aircraft, here is a reason that I hadn't heard before and it makes far more sense; comes from the Captain of a 777:

Think about this one, because this is a far bigger issue! So say I am flying you and your wife and kids on my 777 from LAX to ATL, so you can go visit grandma, or what ever you are doing. As we are descending into ATL, half of the possible 269 passengers on the plane fire up the old Iphone and then call home to tell whoever that they will be landing soon. That's roughly 135 cell phones pinging a couple of towers in the immediate ATL area all at once. Most of which will be trying to access the same tower at the SAME time!!! Now say that those 135 people and the 135 from the aircraft in front of us and the same with the one behind us are trying to do the same thing. Make a long story short, It can overwhelm the local network near the airport and cause failure, which can cause emergency calls to fail as well. Not to mention it #### off the cell phone carriers severely. This is truly the reason why the ban was enacted, because the cell phone carriers were having problems billing people who were using phones on flights. This was because we are doing 500+ Mph and you are skipping between towers so quickly, their computer system cannot tell if you were roaming or not!!

so? your saying the Airlines are so concerned the cell phone company may not be able to bill accurately they then banned the cell phones on their airplanes as so to protect the cell phone carriers?? I don't think airlines give a rats butt about the cell ph companys