Nightmare At Twenty-Thousand Feet

by on November 10, 2006 · 4 comments

I’ve never understood the point of making you turn off electronic devices on airplanes. I mean, if there are electronic devices out there that interfere with onboard navigation on planes, shouldn’t we be doing something more aggressive about it than simply asking nicely?

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About Tim Lee

Timothy B. Lee (Contributor, 2004-2009) is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is currently a PhD student and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He contributes regularly to a variety of online publications, including Ars Technica, Techdirt, Cato @ Liberty, and The Angry Blog. He has been a Mac bigot since 1984, a Unix, vi, and Perl bigot since 1998, and a sworn enemy of HTML-formatted email for as long as certain companies have thought that was a good idea. You can reach him by email at leex1008@umn.edu.

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  • http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk Crosbie Fitch

    Salon’s ‘Ask The Pilot’ column is quite entertaining.

    Here’s a potentially patronising link from one of the columns: http://www.howstuffworks.com/question230.htm

    It’s probably about as dangerous as turning the courtesy lights on inside a car at night. An unnecessary impairment/interference rather than an “Oh my god, the altimeter’s been wrong for over 30 min…” event.

    That said, the human species has no shortage of Hindenberg passengers who believe “no smoking” signs are frivolous.

  • http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk Crosbie Fitch

    Salon’s ‘Ask The Pilot’ column is quite entertaining.

    Here’s a potentially patronising link from one of the columns:
    http://www.howstuffworks.com/question230.htm


    It’s probably about as dangerous as turning the courtesy lights on inside a car at night. An unnecessary impairment/interference rather than an “Oh my god, the altimeter’s been wrong for over 30 min…” event.

    That said, the human species has no shortage of Hindenberg passengers who believe “no smoking” signs are frivolous.

  • Walter E. Wallis

    If the electronics in a commercial airplane are so poorly shielded that emissions from the passenger compartment can down the plane, then the designers are grossly negligent and all the searching of passengers is a waste. Three terrorists could turn on their phones, and the plane goes down.

  • Walter E. Wallis

    If the electronics in a commercial airplane are so poorly shielded that emissions from the passenger compartment can down the plane, then the designers are grossly negligent and all the searching of passengers is a waste.
    Three terrorists could turn on their phones, and the plane goes down.

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