My job for several years of working at NASA/JPL was supporting the operation of our RADAR imaging equipment. I was given the opportunity to fly with the datatake missions frequently. The jet we used was an old Convair 990 passenger plane, basically a standard airliner which the interior had been stripped out of and filled with our equipment, antennae and other instruments had been affixed to the wings and belly, etc.
I remember talking to the flight crew the first time we went up. This was before the era of modern cell phones, GPS devices, MP3 players, etc, but we had hand held radios, CD players, walkie talkies, etc. "Why is it that we take off and land with all this gear running, our radios and other stuff all powered up and going? On a commercial airplane they don't even want us playing a Walkman tape recorder while in flight." "And because they want to assert their control over the passengers to keep order on the plane. If they build aircraft whose navigation and communications equipment are so fragile that a hand-held device like a tape recorder or radio can affect it, that plane shouldn't be allowed off the ground in the first place." I would bet that even in today's world of cell phones, GPS, etc, none of this stuff could even begin to affect the operation of the plane. But that the notion of being in control of the passengers is far and away the reason why they keep these regulations going. Godfrey On Oct 14, 2007, at 9:01 AM, David Savage wrote: > Yes i did know that. But that doesn't change the reason why airlines > don't allow mobile phone usage in flight. > > I don't know if it's a valid reason on modern aircraft, but it's > better to be safe than sorry IMO. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
