actually, they do have it on certain larger planes now (on overland flights), but like hell i'm paying that much for wifiRainboq said:That doesn't exist, at least not yet, having dedicated satellites would be very expensive, plus it would be a VERY slow connection before you'd have a few small dishes serving a lot of passengers, its just not feasible at the moment.aattss said:
OT: Finally, now if only we can start getting LAN tournaments organized on planes
FAA Reconsidering Ban on Gaming During Takeoff
- Thread starter Fanghawk
- Start date
When I was flying this summer all the instructions I got from the three different flight services I used was "Please keep all electronic devices off during take-off and landing." Given that the plane is wobbling about the most in that time period it isn't unreasonable.
They do exist as i mentioned in my post before you. I was on a plane in the states which had its own WiFi but i wasnt allowed to turn on my phone while it was on airplane mode figure that one out.Rainboq said:That doesn't exist, at least not yet, having dedicated satellites would be very expensive, plus it would be a VERY slow connection before you'd have a few small dishes serving a lot of passengers, its just not feasible at the moment.aattss said:
OT: Finally, now if only we can start getting LAN tournaments organized on planes
*grumbles about the bloody yanks getting all the cool toys while us hosers are left to freeze*Spygon said:They do exist as i mentioned in my post before you. I was on a plane in the states which had its own WiFi but i wasnt allowed to turn on my phone while it was on airplane mode figure that one out.Rainboq said:That doesn't exist, at least not yet, having dedicated satellites would be very expensive, plus it would be a VERY slow connection before you'd have a few small dishes serving a lot of passengers, its just not feasible at the moment.aattss said:
OT: Finally, now if only we can start getting LAN tournaments organized on planes
Right. Time to clear some things up...
Phones - with signals - *do* interfere. As a pilot I can absolutely confirm that mobile phone signals interfere with VHF radio communication, and radio navigation.
They do practically nothing with airplane mode enabled, however, and other electronic devices (with wifi turned off) such as MP3 players, DVD players, laptops etc do not interfere with electronics, at least not in any discernible way.
However, the cabin crew don't have time to go round checking you're got 3G and wifi off on all your items so it's far easier to simply introduce a carpet ban on electronic items during critical stages of flight - taxi, takeoff, landing - where a missed radio call or a subtly misleading navigation aid could cause a dangerous situation or even an accident. It's not worth the risk - you can hang on for 10 minutes.
Plus, there's another reason why electronic devices aren't allowed during landing/takeoff, and this is the chance that an emergency might occur. Takeoff and landing are both where most things go wrong, and where you have most things to crash into so naturally these are the most dangerous times.
In the event of a rejected takeoff, or any other sudden deceleration (ie a crash), you don't want phones and iPads flying through the cabin and striking people. This is the same reason why they ask you to put your armrest down - so in a sudden deceleration, it doesn't slam down and break your arm, and why you're asked to have your baggage safely stowed away.
Lastly, you want to have full situational awareness. That isn't going to happen if you're plugged in & playing a game; this is why headphones are asked to be taken off during critical stages of flight. So you knows what's going on, and can hear PA announcements from the cockpit or cabin.
Some of you might say "well they were playing a movie on my flight last week during takeoff, and people were plugged in with earphones into that" - this is true, some airlines do this but if you're plugged into the aircraft's IFE, then any announcements made over the cabin speakers will also be made over the IFE and into your headphones, so you're not losing any awareness.
Phones - with signals - *do* interfere. As a pilot I can absolutely confirm that mobile phone signals interfere with VHF radio communication, and radio navigation.
They do practically nothing with airplane mode enabled, however, and other electronic devices (with wifi turned off) such as MP3 players, DVD players, laptops etc do not interfere with electronics, at least not in any discernible way.
However, the cabin crew don't have time to go round checking you're got 3G and wifi off on all your items so it's far easier to simply introduce a carpet ban on electronic items during critical stages of flight - taxi, takeoff, landing - where a missed radio call or a subtly misleading navigation aid could cause a dangerous situation or even an accident. It's not worth the risk - you can hang on for 10 minutes.
Plus, there's another reason why electronic devices aren't allowed during landing/takeoff, and this is the chance that an emergency might occur. Takeoff and landing are both where most things go wrong, and where you have most things to crash into so naturally these are the most dangerous times.
In the event of a rejected takeoff, or any other sudden deceleration (ie a crash), you don't want phones and iPads flying through the cabin and striking people. This is the same reason why they ask you to put your armrest down - so in a sudden deceleration, it doesn't slam down and break your arm, and why you're asked to have your baggage safely stowed away.
Lastly, you want to have full situational awareness. That isn't going to happen if you're plugged in & playing a game; this is why headphones are asked to be taken off during critical stages of flight. So you knows what's going on, and can hear PA announcements from the cockpit or cabin.
Some of you might say "well they were playing a movie on my flight last week during takeoff, and people were plugged in with earphones into that" - this is true, some airlines do this but if you're plugged into the aircraft's IFE, then any announcements made over the cabin speakers will also be made over the IFE and into your headphones, so you're not losing any awareness.
Not really, I just explained the logic of it, which was the point, towards that end I said quite a bit.theultimateend said:
Argueing likelyhood is something else entirely. You can make points like the ones above quite easily, and counter points can be made, etc... I was intentionally staying out of that, and simply left it as a situation where it's one of those things that's impossible to judge without removing the policy and seeing what happens. It's like most security, if it does it's job you don't see it working. The big question you have to ask is if the professional paranoids turn out to be right, is it worth seeing some really bad things happen? Is that risk worth a few minutes of inconveinence during take off? It's not like a lot is being asked.
But as I said, specifics aside, I explained the reasons behind the polcies as I learned them. Take that as general information, whether you happen to agree with it or not.
I can leave my cellphone on in my coat the entire plane ride and nobody will know.Therumancer said:
Thus the FAA regulations have not stopped anything because there was nothing to stop in terms of terrorism.
There is absolutely no data to back up your points. Citing 9/11 is disingenuous at best and ignores the hundreds of thousands of flights (millions in all) that have not had incidents on them.
The entire point of terrorism is to manipulate foolish people with no concept of reality into acting differently. The policies are foolish and ultimately acts of cowardice.
They do absolutely nothing, they benefit nobody but neurotics, and they have saved no lives because they cannot be enforced.
You are more likely to be killed by your own furniture than a terrorist. Period, end of discussion, you are literally more likely to die in your own house by your television than you are to ever suffer a mishap on an aircraft either by terrorists or by just general failure.
Any suggestion of any likelihood of this sort of thing happening to justify having millions of people act differently is naive and completely outside the realm of reason.
Heck even 9/11 wasn't creative, it had been done before by a disgruntled FedEX employee. Basically a group of people copied something someone else had done before and all that needed to be done to stop them had already been done (reinforcing the cockpit doors).
Goodness, the idea of "professional paranoid" folks is so stupid.
So remarkably stupid.
I just...man.
Look, I'm trying to teach you something and explain the logic. I get that you don't like it, that's fine, but your pretty much taking a jump off the deep end here, and projecting things that aren't here. Indeed where your implying this all comes down to 9/11, I pointed out that the root of these kinds of policies came about long before 9/11, and it doesn't always involve terrorism although that is a common concern, but also things like hijacking.theultimateend said:
I'll also say in a general sense that your naive in general, either that or your letting your dislike of this policy get to you where your running things to extremes where they don't belong.
Understand you persumably live in the USA, or one of the nations tenatively under it's protective Aegis, the much maligned "western first world". The USA is currently the world's last remaining super power (though it's doubtful this will last) and between it and it's allies is truely staggering in it's power. The security this gives people here is something we take for granted, because of the resources it puts into keeping you safe. Your presumption that it's unlikely for someone to be killed by a terrorist or through associated violence is because the USA and it's allies, and their professional paranoids fueled by massive amounts of resources do a good job of keeping you so safe. To see the counterpoint all you have to do is look outside the first world to the second or third world, with all the genocides, civil wars, kidnappsings, torture, murder, and everything else. There are still parts of Asia and Africa where pirates with machine guns pray on the coastal regions, robbing and killing at will. That's no big thing to you because it's somewhere else, your so used to the kind of security and protection that a country like the USA provides that you can't see it any other way, and don't think about why. Your correct, the odds of being killed by a terrorist are mild, but that's because we have so many resources involved in making that comparitively difficult to do, combined with our policies of not dealing with terrorists to make leveraging us difficult (ie we'll let them kill people rather than giving in to demands, making such actions relatively pointless), and of course retaliation from our own covert ops and such. Of course admittedly politics has rendered things a little less safe, as our stumbling around The Middle East has made people a bit less wary of our retaliation than they once were.
Your basic attitude seems to be incredibly sheltered, your idea seems to be that nothing would ever happen because we're inherantly invulnerable, we are that safe for a reason.
Now, whether or not the policy against game devices, cell phones, and other consumer electronics is reasonable and actually contributes to overall security is something that can be debated. Obviously you do not think much of the policy, but your inherant dismissal of security in a general sense (as I understand this) does your case no justice.
Overall, when it comes down to it I'll trust the security professionals that have kept the country safe so far, over someone who doesn't believe in what they do, and just wants to play video games on a plane. But then again a lot of it comes down to life experience, I wasn't in that kind of security, but doing what I did, I experienced and saw so much screwed up stuff just working as casino security, where I prefer to err on the side of caution. Costing millions of people 5 minutes or so worth of video game playing time is not inherantly unreasonable.
In the end we're going to have to agree to disagree, and let it drop. I'm not going to argue the details and specifics, you now know the reasoning, you disagree with it, and that's fine, your certainly not alone.