I don’t travel all that often, but I found this piece interesting. I remember people being able to smoke on planes (never bothered me), I remember having to turn off my walkman during takeoff… Cell phones in flight? Read on – I’d like to see everyone’s thoughts on this topic – do you think our requirements for constant mobile connectivity is out of control? Are we taking too much risk for allowing these devices during flight?

Via The Mobile Gadgeteer

As a frequent business traveler it is funny to see no-smoking signs on aircraft since there hasn’t been smoking allowed on U.S. domestic flights for years. When my kids fly they ask about the signs and indicator lights since they have never seen people smoking on an airplane before. According to a Silicon.com news report, a couple European airlines will soon be replacing no smoking with no mobile indicators as they start to allow in-flight mobile phone calls.

It is interesting that they are allowing this on flights as different studies have showed that it does affect navigational and communication systems on planes. I wonder what the truth is about use of mobile phones on flights since I had read elsewhere that it really was a carrier issue with the plane speed messing up the cellular tower signals as passengers flew overhead and jumped from tower to tower faster than the system could handle.

I personally hope I never get on a plane where mobile phone calls are allowed because I really don’t need to hear the conversations of 100 other people while I am trying to work or relax on the flight. It is bad enough hearing people talk loudly on their phones on short bus rides and I can’t imagine having to put up with rude people on a long flight. I would like to see data services where people could email or chat with each other since they could get work done without disturbing other passengers, but jamming people into small seats and then letting people chat away on their mobile phones while in the air is just a recipe for problems. I don’t see any real benefit (actually I see much more potential for problems) in allowing use of mobile phones on airline, do you?

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