I have a confession to make: I don't turn off my phone on a plane before takeoff and landing--I just put it in airplane mode. Sometimes I take photos on the way up or down too. I'll bet most of you can plead guilty to the same offenses.
The airlines' longstanding prohibition against having electronic devices powered on during those phases of flight is in the news yet again. Ten days ago, the New York Times' Nick Bilton noted the lack of evidence of any danger from keeping gadgets on but offline -- and the fact that powering a phone back on causes it to blurt out a burst of wireless signals. That led to a petition at the White House's site asking the Federal Aviation Administration to permit passengers to use those devices in airplane mode during taxing, takeoff and landing (at 1,080 signatures as of this writing, it's woefully short of the 25,000 needed for it to earn a response).
Then Alec Baldwin had a temper tantrum. The actor didn't want to stop playing Words With Friends on his phone while his American Airlines plane was at the gate with its door closed. He got kicked off the flight for his trouble and then started mocking American on his (since-closed) Twitter account.
Baldwin could have been a martyr for gadget lovers, except his real offenses were insulting the cabin crew, then retreating to the lavatory and shoving the door shut loudly enough for the captain to hear.
But for those of us with the courtesy to avoid "Do You Know Who I Am?!" rudeness, what about the underlying evidence? It leaves little room for other interpretations: It's fine if you keep your phone, tablet or e-book reader in airplane mode. Years of research (not to mention an investigation by Discovery's Mythbusters) have failed to prove a correlation between keeping a device powered on but offline and subsequent malfunctions by a plane's electronic hardware.
The best advocates for this prohibition can say is that there's a one in a million chance of a random glitch, so we're better safe than sorry. Problem is, far more than one in every million passengers forget to switch a phone to airplane mode. (I once left mine on from Washington to most of the way to San Francisco; fortunately, nobody tried to call.) If this were a real danger, cabin crews would collect phones before takeoff.
(The ban on in-air phone transmissions comes from the Federal Communications Commission, which wants to prevent interference with ground-based wireless networks.)
There are good reasons to put your phone away during taxiing, takeoff and landing: You should pay attention to your surroundings and the safety briefing (pop quiz: where's the closest emergency exit?). You shouldn't read a book or magazine during those times either -- but our collective digital-versus-analog hangup gives us one rule for electronic reading and none for the analog kind.
So my advice is to switch your phone to airplane mode, then put it away until the all-clear at 10,000 feet or after exiting the runway. Save your (discreet) photography of the departure or approach for when the landing gear are up.
But if a flight attendant catches you and tells you to shut down your device, don't get into a fight. Nobody will take your side. Even if -- no, especially if -- you're a celebrity with a reputation for poor anger management.
Credit: Rob Pegoraro/Discovery
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