Why can't you use your cellphone on an airplane?

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weyboom

because that would make the plan crash

jesse6317

It messes with the electronics on the plane.

Random Precision

They would not screw up anything, but would you want to be stuck next to someone yapping on a cellphone for 3 hours?

rifleman01@verizon.net

Like the US space shuttle, most airplanes in use now use old tech. (The space shuttle still uses tape drives!) Really old tech. Lots of things for navigation and some types of autopilot, auto anything, depend on radio signals. Some of these signals can be overcome by even a weak cell phone signal. It ain't gonna bother the pilot him/herself, but will make them really busy if they are looking for a signal marker, (RDF) then find it coming from behind them!

Best bet. Don't use the phone. Sure, the 9/11 people on the plane that did not make it to it's target used cell phones, but they had nothing to lose. Who's to say the use of the cell phones did not make it harder for the terrorists to fly the plane?

IceTrojan

See here: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AjOtFTymLFYr5hArvIyO8CdIzKIX?qid=20061107083128AA8GZpu

BTW - Don't similar questions pop up when you ask, so that you don't have to ask the same question again (and again, and again, and again...)?

conundrum_dragon

It messes with the instruments in the plane and could cause a malfunction somewhere

dcgirl

There's so much disagreement on whether or not it screws up the instrumentation that I won't even touch that! But I do know...

-It won't work very well. When you are travelling at 500mph, your phone will have a hard time switching signal towers. By the time you have a good connection to a signal tower, your plane has moved you out of its signal range and it has to search again.

-The signal in a cell phone can be altered so it becomes a remote control for explosives. Ever watched the demolition crews take down a staduim or huge building? They set the explosives off with radio signals. Someone who knew what they were doing could do the same thing with a cell phone. It's not easy but it could be done.

-At lower speeds, you are usually closer to the ground. Lower speed and lower altitude are usually during takeoff and landing which are the most dangerous times of any flight. Once you're airborne, you're a lot safer (but then you can't keep a signal). Since the times in the flight when your phone will work the best just happen to be the times when there's the greatest risk of a crash, cell phone use is banned. That's because phones are a huge distraction; if there was a crash, you might be talking on your phone and miss the emergency instructions, or worse, your neighbor would be talking on the phone and cause YOU to miss the instructions. Plus any electronic devices can become projectiles in a crash. If you didn't have a good grip on your cell, and the plane had even a rough landing and not an actual crash, it might fly out of your hand and hit someone, or end up on the floor where someone could slip on it. Basically, if you survive a crash, you have just a few minutes to get everyone out of the plane before fire breaks out. You don't need someone who didn't hear the instructions slowing everyone down, nor do you need anything in the aisles at all that could cause people to slip or trip. Every second counts.

Personally I am glad there are no cell phones used during a flight. It's hard enough to be shoulder-to-shoulder with a stranger, and dealing with screaming babies and women breast-feeding. I don't need someone yakking away about what's for dinner on top of it all!

Ralfcoder

A cell phone emits radio waves. An airplane is full of electrical wires that run the full length of the plane, carrying signals from sensors, telling different controls to move this way and that, etc. Those wires can act like antennas, and pick up the radio signal from the phone. If that wire is the one that feeds info to the compass, the pilot may had for Boise instead of Boston. Depending on your opinion of Boston, that may be in improvement. However, the 200 other people on the plane are likely to be a little ticked off at you.

Federal law, you might be signaling someone

foofoo

It has nothing to do with the pilot. It disrupts the functioning of the plane. Unless you do want to crash, don't open your cell phone on a plane or any electronic device for that matter.

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