Air NZ seeks in-flight caller

[HamiltonWest]

Air NZ seeks in-flight caller


Air New Zealand is trying to trace a passenger seen talking on his cellphone during a domestic flight, who allegedly claimed he had been given permission.

Full item is located here:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article....jectid=10683812

[HercFeend]

I totally agree that you shouldn't be allowed to use mobiles on flights but for no other reason than how bloody annoying it is having to sit there listening to some pompous arse letting the world how fickin important he/she is - then times that by dozens. Air rage would increase without a doubt! This very phenomena drove most of the general public mad in many a country on trains in particular until some enlightened sole decided to nominate "mobile free' carriages - gord bless 'em!

As for the phones interfering with aircraft systems, what tosh! How many of us have our phones on while we're flying GA? Indeed they make headsets with Bluetooth or jacks installed for the specific purpose of mobile phone connectivity & compatibility.......! There's no evidence one way or the other so unless it's a great way of ensuring the above, it's the airlines erring on the side of caution......... It doesn't bother me what the reason is as long as they keep it this way

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (HercFeend @ Oct 29 2010, 02:22 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As for the phones interfering with aircraft systems, what tosh! How many of us have our phones on while we're flying GA? Indeed they make headsets with Bluetooth or jacks installed for the specific purpose of mobile phone connectivity & compatibility.......! There's no evidence one way or the other so unless it's a great way of ensuring the above, it's the airlines erring on the side of caution......... It doesn't bother me what the reason is as long as they keep it this way

Agreed - it's like that nonsense about cellphones having to be switched off when filling my car with petrol. Still, lies or not, it's great not having someone yakking incessantly on their phone the whole trip: even a short-hop like Napier to WN would be a trial with someone talking loudly (to compensate for the aircraft noise) behind or in front of me. I had this on a bus from Greymouth to CHCH: as soon as we were back in reception range, this chick behind me was on the blower the whole rest of the way back - a non-stop river of drivel: joy...

[cowpatz]

Actually chaps it's not drivel...well the cell phones having to switched off on gas station courtyards is.
I have had first hand experience of a game boy causing an autothrottle to keep dropping out. When it was pointed out that a game boy was being used
in the cabin we had it switched off and then on again several times. Each time it affected the autothrottle....and this is just a game boy. A cell phone has far greater RF capability.
I would not imagine cell phone use in GA to be an major issue as the degree of sophistication of the avionic and autoflight controls are less integrated and sophisticated.
If someone can't survive for a few hours without having to gas bag on a phone then frankly they need to get a life.

[IslandBoy77]

That's interesting - there does appear to be quite some doubt expressed in general outside of airline management, and the results from tests also appear "soft" at best. Cowpatz: can you offer a "technical" theory as to how RF affects "sophisticated" electronics? While I'm no aircraft engineer, my observation is that aircraft seem to have an awful lot of wires and cables and very little in the way of gear that would be susceptible to the very weak signal generated by even a bunch of phones. Wouldn't there be more power washing about in the atmosphere from the cellphone towers & repeater stations than in the phones? The average consumer phone doesn't "transmit" very far - it's more a case if it hooking into the available wash of signal - yes?

I'm very interested in this, and it could be quite an illuminating discussion / mini-investigation - rather than a slog-fest of "entrenched positions"...

[HercFeend]

QUOTE (cowpatz @ Oct 29 2010, 02:55 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I have had first hand experience of a game boy causing an autothrottle to keep dropping out. When it was pointed out that a game boy was being used
in the cabin we had it switched off and then on again several times. Each time it affected the autothrottle....and this is just a game boy. A cell phone has far greater RF capability.

This could get very he said she said. I don't deny your account is accurate but it's also not scientific or conclusive - which I think is the reason for the rules (err on the safe side) - it could have been coincidence. The shielding and redundancy incorporated into flybywire systems would prevent interference of this nature, if it didn't the shear number of systems on board and their corresponding wiring looms in close proximity would cause havok with each other and this is not to mention the interferance associated with the thousands of ground based transmitting devices constantly being over flown. Having said all that, I'd be interested to hear what Airbus or Boeing said when you reported this occurrence to them - which, due to the scale of the issue (auto throttle errors, sounds alarming), I assume the company must have been done.

To a great degree it depend on who you talk to and their personal opinions on the subject - an instructor of mine back in the UK was an ex military current 474 captain - he told me it was rubbish.........

Anyway, like I said before I think it's a great rule, may it long continue - whatever the reason for it.

What should be band is filling up your car whist wearing a polyester shell suit - or should polyester shell suits just be banned full stop?

[deaneb]

Lets face it - if cell phones were such a serious threat - they wouldn't be allowed as carry on luggage would they. If they are such a threat, then its tantamount to asking people to make sure their carry on bombs have the detonators removed and their guns have safety catches on !!
It seems there is no real proof - except in some unknown cases, they pose a risk, hence the fuss. When I regularly flew across the straight using Air2there on the cessna caravan, we were often told - no need to switch your cell phones off - they are fine !!

As for cell phones at petrol stations - there has never been a case of a cell phone causing a fire or explosion. But then again - I don't want to be the first person to prove Myth Busters wrong !!

[Ian Warren]

I.m on flightsim 747 to Auckland , then blink computer crash,s .... hang on .. i don,t own a cellphone type 'communicator' , what caused my flight to Auckland to crash , arr that,s the answer 'Herald news spy,s' and a cellphone tower plonked hundred meters away .

[Naki]

I was guilty once of having my cell phone ring in an Air NZ 737 ....had two cell phones - one in my hand was turned off but the one in my luggage in the over head locker wasn't ...whoops...cabin announcement came over about a cell phone ringing ..didn't plead guilty as I had completey forgotten about the other cell and I didn't hear it ring ..checked the offending cell later and it was still on and there were messages on my phone from calls made during my flight.

[AlisterC]

I went to an "information evening" type of event a couple of years back, and it was a discussion being given by Air New Zealand's 777 chief pilot Captain Dave Morgan. The point of cell phones onboard was brought up, and I will endeavour to tell you what he said in response (from my memory).
He was flying the 777 out of Japan, and he strangely lost radio communications. They checked the usual things, but eventually they tracked it down to something as simple as someone using a PSP/ Gameboy type of device in the passenger cabin. The person was using it leaning against the fuselage wall, with the device pressed up against the wall. Just behind that wall was a bunch of wires and the like running from floor to roof. That turned out to be the problem.
Something along those lines is what he told the crowd there to listen to his little chat. I would never have thought it!

[IslandBoy77]

Ah, good - some discussion! And no ruffled feathers yet - excellent!

Has anyone here got much of a bead on Physics? I didn't do very well at the subject at school, but I know some people just "took to it" and thoroughly understood all the principles involved. Why I ask is this: there are obviously reported "happenings" like the PSP incident. Circumstantial or not, the shutting down of the PSP fixed the problem they were having on the flight deck. But at the same time, logic / physics must dictate something along the lines of what HercFeend said "The shielding and redundancy incorporated into flybywire systems would prevent interference of this nature, if it didn't the shear number of systems on board and their corresponding wiring looms in close proximity would cause havoc with each other and this is not to mention the interference associated with the thousands of ground based transmitting devices constantly being over flown." The only other alternative is not one that I would want to be true: that the electronics onboard modern aircraft ARE able to be interrupted by miscellaneous & random electronic events - leading one to the conclusion that there could well be a much larger, more dangerous issue lying dormant.

I've only just discovered the Air Investigation series recently, and have been watching online episodes here & there over the last couple of weeks (onto episode 3 in season 2 now). On the one hand, you've got "miraculous" stories like the A320 as the world's largest un-powered glider and the ASA Embraer that can stand an engine being half torn off the wing. Then in other cases, you've got dickey electronics & failures that seem to come out of nowhere (which of course they don't) and it's all over rover.

So, we need to be able to ascertain a few things: just how vulnerable to various types of magnetic / radio radiation are modern aircraft computer systems / wiring? And just how much of said radiation from on-board sources is there and at what actual power?

As HercFeend said, the absence of cellphones on flights is good no matter what the reason, but using "you'll make the plane crash" if it isn't true is not only disingenuous, it encourages distrust by passengers of "official wisdom".

[Timmo]

QUOTE (deaneb @ Oct 29 2010, 04:07 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As for cell phones at petrol stations - there has never been a case of a cell phone causing a fire or explosion. But then again - I don't want to be the first person to prove Myth Busters wrong !!

Yep, that is the most stupid rule in the world- A cell phone is a fire risk? 5v....covered in plastic or alloy....with almost zero metal to cause a spark....as you pull onto the forecourt driving a car with a super hot exhausts, 12V + high voltage coils, shed loads of nasty metal bits to cause sparks, lots of synthetic materials to cause static electricity......hmmm

[deaneb]

QUOTE (Timmo @ Oct 29 2010, 08:43 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yep, that is the most stupid rule in the world- A cell phone is a fire risk? 5v....covered in plastic or alloy....with almost zero metal to cause a spark....as you pull onto the forecourt driving a car with a super hot exhausts, 12V + high voltage coils, shed loads of nasty metal bits to cause sparks, lots of synthetic materials to cause static electricity......hmmm

The real risk is returning to your car to grab your phone or answer it. I believe there have beem fires caused by static discharge, when people have opened car door to get back in.

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (deaneb @ Oct 29 2010, 09:43 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The real risk is returning to your car to grab your phone or answer it. I believe there have beem fires caused by static discharge, when people have opened car door to get back in.

Yeah, I have a vague recollection of that being the thing that sparked (pun intended) it all off - someone going to answer their phone and the static they created getting it being the cause. But why they would slap the "bad" label on the phone - that's just odd. I always have my ph with me at the petrol stations. And it's on. So if you hear a muffled boom from Napier one day, you'll know "they" were right after all...

[deaneb]

QUOTE (Albatross @ Oct 29 2010, 05:55 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I went to an "information evening" type of event a couple of years back, and it was a discussion being given by Air New Zealand's 777 chief pilot Captain Dave Morgan. The point of cell phones onboard was brought up, and I will endeavour to tell you what he said in response (from my memory).
He was flying the 777 out of Japan, and he strangely lost radio communications. They checked the usual things, but eventually they tracked it down to something as simple as someone using a PSP/ Gameboy type of device in the passenger cabin. The person was using it leaning against the fuselage wall, with the device pressed up against the wall. Just behind that wall was a bunch of wires and the like running from floor to roof. That turned out to be the problem.
Something along those lines is what he told the crowd there to listen to his little chat. I would never have thought it!

If that is true, that such a device could cause loss of radio comms for even a short time, then I'm afraid it should have been tested, proven and portable devices banned?? Its a good story from a reputable source, but just like IslandBoy, I refuse to accept it until all other possibilities are ruled out.

[Ian Warren]

Was an engineer for many years , now a simple cable maker , in the last two year s doing that is very interesting how electricity is generated and has a huge affect in testing , 10 km off cable run through extruders then put though another process then another just to get your what looks like computer cable 'LAN' as you would no it , all this winding and twisting creates an electric charge , your get the twist lay wrong or set speeds for CAT5 or CAT6 .. all hell breaks loose . the cable starts talking !

Maybe this is were the concern is , the electromagnetic field close to primary aircraft wiring looms , it dose have a concern if cable is 'example' China based and not quality tested , and lotta that ends up in airliners .

[AlisterC]

There is every possibility he made it up to make sure we all stayed off our cell phones
The Sony PSP does have built in wireless technology if I'm not mistaken. Certainly might make more of an impact than just electrical interference

[IslandBoy77]

So if I'm not mistaken, devices like the PSP above and cellphones in general (plus the likes of iPads, laptops and anything else with radio-transmission capabilities) radiate a form of electromagnetic energy. As Ian says, cabling can be a very finicky thing at best, as the power / signals flowing through them do create their own "field" as they go, and if cables are not laid correctly (no toilet jokes please ) or their shielding is insufficient, one gets all manner of distorted harmonics, feedback, bleed etc etc etc. All that being true, the boffins that design aircraft and their wiring will surely know this, and must plan accordingly. Knowing what they know, then, they have to check the following off:
- Good quality shielding
- Cables laid in the correct directions / manner to minimise / eliminate all the nasty power / signal problems Ian alludes to
- Sufficient protection from outside signal interference (outside meaning outside of the cable itself, not necessarily literally outside the skin of the aircraft)
- Redundancy
- Signal error correction
- Radiation leakage (as in, stuff that comes out of the radar in the nose not leeching backwards into vital systems)
- A whole bunch of other stuff that I'm sure is really important...

I was thinking about the radar last night - I wonder how much "leakage" there is of the radiation it spews out when active? Is it's effect cumulative? It's very close to all the wiring etc directly in front of the pilots - surely that would be a really bad place for "issues" to crop up? And what about all that other energy, radiation and extraneous signals washing through the atmosphere around the aircraft? Let's count a few: other radar (space-based, airborne, ground-based, ship-based), TV signals, radio signals (ham radio, short-wave, commercial radio stations, pulsars), microwave signals, various space-based radiation (quasars, our sun, ambient back-ground radiation), wireless signals (phones, broadband, specialist stuff like the military) - have I missed any significant group? The altitude of the aircraft is also going to expose it differently as well - over the ocean at medium altitude (say, 20k) might be fairly low, but then over cities at lowish altitudes would be very high, or when flying very high (being more exposed to strong space-based stuff).

It does leave me wondering just where the truth lies in all this - IS there really a problem with consumer-grade electronics interfering with on-boards systems, cutting through all the other interference and somehow causing a specific, close-proximity problem? Or is it mostly an excuse to keep us a bit saner when flying at several hundred k's an hour in a hollow silver tube with 400 other people for 10 hours?

[cowpatz]

Interesting debate and one that has been going on for Donkey's years. It is one of the reasons that cellphones now have a flight mode.
Not all aircraft avionics are shielded. During certification the systems are tested and any known interaction dealt with during the process.
Likewise any refit requires testing and certification. Surprisingly Game boys and PSP's top the list for interference. Some can be reproduced but only there and then.
Change any of the possible variables and the problem is unable to be reproduced. This is why a definitive position is taking so long to achieve. There are
so many variables and possible outcomes that it would be practically impossible to prove that cell phone use is safe. Dave Morgan is not alone in his experience.
Within Air NZ there have been many just like that and hence our policy. Given that aircraft are now fly by wire and the systems so integrated and complex I am of the
opinion that until the aircraft manufacturer can prove that their systems are impervious to interference then the policy should remain.

As for gas stations....it has always surprised me that when filling up an aircraft it has to be statically grounded with a grounding lead yet a car does not.
I get the odd good zap off my car (must be those expensive shirts I buy ). I try to make sure that I "discharge" myself prior to filling up the car or bike.
Given the number of customers filling up at any time there are surprisingly few incidents.

[IslandBoy77]

Thanks for that cowpatz. I agree that "if in doubt, don't" is a far better policy than the reverse. It's my hope that indeed the complexities of it all - new systems, increase in devices / sources of interference - is the reason, not some basic vulnerability being "hidden" from view. Unfortunately, the incidence of "corner cutting" by some of the airlines shown on Air Investigation (eg Alaska) has lead me to be more skeptical of motivations. Air NZ appears to be, from the outside and to the uninitiated, a pretty upfront airline that does not strike me as a corner-cutter. And as one commentator interviewed on a recent episode of AI noted, I would rather pay $5-$10 more for my ticket if it meant a safer aircraft that was maintained properly.

I was thnking this morning about non-RF / radiative devices that are still electronic. Is there a definitive reason why I'm not allowed to use my digital camera during takeoff and landing? Is this just a safety thing, or is there some odd / bizarre "interference" reason given for that? It's funny that I've been able to use my camera during takeoff / landing on some aircraft and not others. I don't get to fly commercially much these days (average once every other year, and then 99% domestic), so I don't remember what aircraft I was on or what carrier or where I was going when I was or wasn't allowed to film (I do love to film takeoffs and landings - the best parts of the whole trip!), or how long ago each incident was. Since I do fly so rarely, and this on-going public debate about electronics has really only come to the fore over the last couple of 3 years (at least as far as I'm concerned), the rarity / infrequency of my flights / experiences means I have no clear recollection. Further, it's probable that policy has been changing along the way, so even if I could remember the who, where and when, the same might not apply now - would that be accurate, do you think?

And I certainly agree with you cowpatz about the "zapping" at petrol stations and potential for "incidents". Now that I think of it how you describe, it really IS a wonder that there aren't a lot more problems. I wonder if that is due to the actual, real risk being low but hyped-up to make us mindful, or whether we somehow as a populace manage to repeatedly "beat the odds" day in and day out? If the latter, it doesn't give one a warm, fuzzy feeling...