Hi! My name is Eric, and like a number of the bloggers in the new Huffington Post Science section, I'm a scientist. An astrophysicist, to be exact. Unlike many of them, I've never won a Nobel prize. Even if I find ET, someone else will get the prize. It doesn't bother me much. Not having a Nobel means I don't have to talk about big picture stuff or seem particularly wise. It also means I can put an equation in my post. Like all scientists, I like beer, football, and explosions. So we can talk about media stereotypes of scientists in a later blog. We can also explore issues from the Big Bang Theory to The Big Bang Theory. And we'll talk about life on other planets and life on the only planet where we know it exists. We'll talk about climate change, and how to tread water while waiting for the rescue boats.
Last week, I was in a hotel lobby reading the USA Today. Like 95% of Americans, I only read the USA Today when I'm staying in a hotel. That factoid was on the cover. When I got to the letters section, I found a heated discussion was about Alec Baldwin being put off an airliner for using his cell phone and the arguments were about whether a cell phone could down an airliner. Opinions ranged from "a cell phone can't effect an airplanes instruments" to "there have been cases of navigation errors due to cell phones."
One fun part of being a scientist is you don't have to know the answers to questions. Even if you can't get an exact answer, you can make an estimate based upon facts you do know. In my business, one of the most famous examples of such an estimate is the "Drake Equation" which an astronomer named Frank Drake came up with in 1961 to estimate the number of civilizations in the Galaxy with which we could potentially communicate. It looks like this:
It's got stuff we don't know on the left side (number of communicating civilizations) and on the right side things we might possibly know some day like the Galactic star formation rate and the average number of earth like planets per star. I won't go into more detail because we've been talking about that equation for 50 years. Maybe later. But scientists use similar equations all the time. So with no further ado I introduce you to the "Baldwin Equation." (First rule of science: when your equation is talking about hundreds of potential deaths, name it after someone else. Alec can always claim its about Billy.) Here's the Baldwin Equation.
Nc = Rf np fph fon pc
It's pretty simillar to the Drake Equation. Nc is the number of crashes per year caused by cell phones. Rf is the rate of airline flights (flights per year, about 10.4 million), np is the number of passengers per plane (an average of 264), fph is the fraction that have cell phones (somewhere around 90% in U.S.). fon is, the fraction of cell phones that are left on during a flight a different story. I don't know of any studies that say what that fraction is, so we'll have to go on my mostly subjective impression. I've noticed that smart phones are very likely to be left on, probably because they take a long time to start up. I only remember one time that I saw someone actually turn an iPhone off on a flight. This includes flights where the flight attendants explained the process for turning off an iPhone. I've also never seen anyone turn off an iPad.
On the last flight I took, among the 12 people in my row and the row ahead I counted 10 cell phones and four got left on. The guy sitting next to me turned up his ringer and put in the seat pocket. I guess he was expecting an important call. Apparently nobody told him that his chances of successfully receiving a call at 38,000 feet are very small. Anyway, that's 40% of the phones being on.
The product of those terms, 1 billion, is an approximation of the number of cell phones that fly in the U.S. annually in a powered on state. pc which we haven't defined, is the probability that a single cell phone will cause a crash. We don't know what pc is, other than that is isn't a big number or planes would be falling out of the sky, and that it probably isn't zero. If we assume that nothing has changed in the number of phones flying in the last 5 years, we can say that it's likely that pc is less than one in 5 billion. If you put that number in for pc you get a crash every 5 years, which we haven't had.
So what has this exercise told us? Your cell phone is very unlikely to cause a crash. But lets look at it from the FAA's perspective. They don't know what pc is either, and they have to worry about the effects of billions of phones. One of those billions of phones may have been dropped or gotten hit with a cosmic ray in a way that makes it broadcast on the wrong frequency. But you say "The chances of that are a billion to one!" With two billion phones flying annually, that would be two crashes a year. The probability of a crash increases with the number of powered on phones, and for the FAA the only acceptable number of crashes is zero. That means no powered on phones, and hence the rule. If they drop the rule, the risk of a crash triples, and if pc is high enough, that could mean a crash a year.
What does that mean for Alec Baldwin? Well, I lied to you. Alec Baldwin didn't get kicked off a plane because his cell phone was on. Alec Baldwin got kicked off a plane for not following the instructions of a flight attendant. Imagine if everyone on a flight decided that they didn't need to follow flight attendant instructions. We've all felt singled out on occasion, if we've flown enough. My prescription is to apologize, do what I'm told, order a drink when I can, and complain to friends later. There's a time and place to fight, and fighting a flight attendant on an airliner is never the time and place.
What does it mean for you? It means that there is a very, very, very small chance that the seven seconds it takes to turn off your phone and the 30 seconds it takes to turn it back on could save 300 lives. Is 37 seconds too inconvenient? The cost to passengers is 37 seconds when they are trapped on an airplane, anyway. And please don't turn it back on until the wheels are on the ground and you've left the runway. In order to keep certified for automatics landing, the crew might be letting the plane land itself. In other words computer might be landing the plane by following radio signals. The last thing you want is a bunch of frequency hopping transmitters splattering signals all over the spectrum when you're a few hundred feet up. If a cell phone can crash a plane, that would be when.
However i would point out that as all electrical and electronic systems are "hardened" against static and electromagnetic interference, the chances of any aircraft being negatively impacted by the use of a cell phone is so vanishingly small I would worry more about whether the Pilot was likely to get a bad case of botulism during the flight as it's more likely..
BUT...it is not fair to other passengers to sit there gabbing on your phone, and realistically, until satellites footprint the cell signals across oceans and to serious height, there is no point having it on as your exceedingly unlikely to receive a signal..unless it's a rival operator trying to cell you a new cell phone!!
No argument, turn it off or GTFO.
No one wants to be inconvenienced in their reality. But look at the situation from the other side. The captain of the plane and the flight crew are responsible for the 150 souls on board. So instead of sucking them into a dispute with some uncooperative passenger, let's give them the opportunity to concentrate on the more important matter at hand - getting us all safely to our destination. How could any of our realities be more important than the flight crew's reality?
To them a good landing is when everyone lives. A perfect landing is when they get to reuse the plane.
There was an informative article about this (I think it was in the NYT) recently and they stated there was no chance of this happening.
It's about getting the passengers to obey orders.
The majority of these comments are proof that passengers should continue to be forced to obey orders, as no one really knows what they're talking about. Your airline Captain has as much education as your surgeon or lawyer and more time in practice. When it comes to something like turning off your cell phone, show some respect, shut the hell up and enjoy the flight.
Any media outlet hiring an Aviation consultant?? If you have a legitimate question please do ask...
I can't find the NYT article you're talking about, but here's an ABC story about possible instrument disruptions due to portable electronic devices. http://tinyurl.com/6phtntb
As we become and increasingly electronics-oriented society, I think it will become important that the questions about electic intereference and aircraft get answered and not assumed.
Before you comment, familiarize yourself these "auto-pilot" landings the author discussed. Youtube Cat III ILS (category 3 ILS). Watch a few videos and realize the pilots are tracking an instrument with ZERO visibility that displays the glide slope and horizontal range that functions on frequencies 108.10 to 111.95. That is just above our FM radio.
Do you want to risk the potential results from your AM/FM/wi-fi/gps app receiver via the latest cell phone? Your Captain and the FAA's answer will continue to be NO. There are an incomprehensible number of interactions to consider between cell phones and flight computers. High-altitude interference is nominal in comparison to an instrument error 200 feet above the ground travelling 180knots forward and 800 feet per minute into the Earth.
The chances are low, this new need for an instant connection will never be worth the risk of a life.
Enjoy the flight!
Anyway some of you may have noticed that the Baldwin equation is missing from the article. To quote Han Solo, it's not my fault. The equation should be...
N_c = R_f n_p f_ph f_on p_c
I'm trying to get it fixed.
Just for clarification: the underscores represent subscripts?
Then why doesn't this equation say anything about radiation density? Planes are lengthy objects... Are we supposed to believe that a phone near the tail section will affect the cockpit the same as one in first class?
It also tapers at the back, so the radiation from a cellphone in the tail section would be preferentially funneled up towards the head end where most of the electronics are.
It might go against 'common sense', but a little knowledge helps.
The risk is just not worth taking.
Switch off, stay safe(r).
Except on 9/11, when all the magical cell-phone calls were *SUCCESSFULLY* made according to the *OFFICIAL* government story? Gotta love it when a *scientist* has to play with statistics in order to toe-the-party-line!
People who have tried from private planes typically find it difficult to connect when more than a few thousand feet above ground level. I see on the web that some people have tried from 20,000 feet without success from commercial flights. (Bad idea. Getting caught at altitude could be more of a problems than getting kicked off at ground level.)
Cellular net antennas are not designed for transmissions to high altitudes, and the signals are not at appropriate frequencies to penetrate aircraft skins. I stand by my contention that a phone in a seat back pocket of a middle seat won't receive calls at high altitude. An experiment to test it is illegal, so we'll just have to agree to disagree.
While cellular antennas do have a horizontally-directed power pattern, it's not impossible to reach 40,000 feet. It is made a bit tougher by sitting in a conducting box. On the other hand, hand-held GPS units usually get a fine signal from inside smaller conducting boxes
Wait a minute, crashes DO happen, so based on this logic, the FAA is an INCOMPETENT agency!