Talk:Mobile phones on aircraft

message: I came to this page because I was looking through contributions from an anonymous IP address which had vandalized the Adolf Hitler article today. I saw an edit from 24 November, and accidentally clicked the rollback button, while intending to click the diff. I tried to stop my edit, but it was too late. I would not have rolled back without checking that it was vandalism, especially since the edit could be from a completely different person. I then rolled back my own edit. I am not familiar with this article, and have no view on whether or not the NPOV tag should be on it. Someone else should look into it. I simply rolled myself back because I had not intended to use rollback. Apologies. AnnH (talk) 15:26, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Explaining my reversion

message: Shouldn't the title be "Use of Mobile phones on Commercial Aircrafts"? As far as I can see the whole article deals with that rather than the actualy mobile phone on aircraft. --antilived T | C 22:57, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New title?

message: I've done some limited NPOV editing of the article. What do you guys think? Werdna648T/C\@ 07:09, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup

message: While I'm not sure what their current policy is, this article from last June  says that Cingular is in favor of keeping the ban on cell phone use on airliners, due to the fact that people talking on their phones can be irritating to those around them.--Raguleader 18:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Cingular Against Phone Use On Planes

message: I can in no one verify this but I heard that companies can not properly bill people who use cell phones in planes.Tjb891 20:28, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Billing Idea

message: mobile phone types
GSM TDMA phones cause more problems to sensitive equipment than CDMA phones.  This is because the GSM phones actually transmit quite high powered "pulses" of RF energy, typically several watts.  A CDMA phone will only produce a maximum output of +22dBm (slightly less than 200 milliwatts).  This will explain why a GSM phone will cause a loud buzz if placed near any audio equipment while being used on a call.  Due to its much lower power output, a CDMA phone is less likely to cause this problem.
There are 3 primary concerns related to the use of mobile phones in aircraft.
1. The potential high energy pulses from some phones will effect the sensitive navigational and audio equipment on an aircraft.
2. A mobile phone situated thousands of feet in the air could have an effect on the phone carriers network of base stations on the ground.  This is primarily because of frequency re-use as mentioned in the above information from cluth.
3. The antenna systems used on the phone carriers base station networks are designed to work with signals from either down or out from the base station (and not up).  As the base stations often use very high gain and/or directional antennas, not much of the signal from the base station is radiated up towards aircraft flying above (or received at the base station from a mobile in an aircraft).  As a mobile phone in an aircraft would be receiving a weak signal, it will automatically "turn" its transmit power up to maximum in an attempt to connect to the base station on the ground, hence creating the worst effect on the aircrafts sensitive systems.
While CDMA phone technology is more capable of dealing with frequency re-use, the base stations are mainly on the same RF channel (frequency), the base station antenna situation mentioned above will prevent the phones from working effectively. --Ericdog 03:38, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: There are 3 potential reasons for the non-use of mobile phones in aircraft

message: Not sure how relavent this is, but on all the flights I have been on recently (from the UK to Cyprus) the cabin crew have request that all phones be switched off even if they do have an 'In-flight mode'. --82.37.34.177 17:57, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is very interesting, as, when "in flight mode" is selected on a mobile phone, the whole RF (radio frequency) section is disabled and the phone can not transmit any signals.  It would seem like an over-reaction on the part of the airline company.. Ericdog 12:30, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Or perhaps not. A lot of electronic devices (even those not designed to transmit radio signals) generate quite a lot of radio frequency noise (try listening to some weaker AM stations with a radio beside your computer any youll see) Maybe some models of cellphone generate a lot of RF noise even when being used as an music player, camera or whatever ? 80.229.222.48 17:31, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't have any references for my statement at this time, simply because I'm too lazy to perform more research at this time, but 7 years as an electrician (substation technician) and plain old common sense tells me that something as small as an MP3 player, such as an iPod or iPhone on airplane mode, could never create enough EMF, noise, RF interference or whatever else you want to call it, to affect the planes on-board electronics. I agree with switching your phone to airplane mode for the whole flight, even if there is no hard evidence of a danger caused by them, but why must we spend that whole period of time during take off and landing without our little electronic treasures? Especially when some flights have TV screens in the back of every seat running the whole flight (including take off and landing!). I understand it is slightly safer and easier for the airline to request ALL electronic devices be switched off during take off and landing. It avoids confusion and is probably easier than people trying to figure out how to find airplane mode, but I personally keep my iPod running as long as I am getting away with it. If something so small caused any REAL danger they would search you and confiscate such items before the flight, as they do with any other potential dangers.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.46.14.76 (talk) 01:49, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Aeroplane Mode

message: I'm not going to get into editing this article, but here are some links to relevant reports - make of them what you will.  Jeh 20:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Links to reports and other information

message: A previous edit claimed
Some airlines do allow use of mobiles phones in flight, only restricting their use (and use of all other electronic devices) during take off and landing when communications with the ground are most critical. 
Yeah? Name three.  I'm moving this text here; if anyone stands up for this statement, please provide documentation. Almost all airlines allow the use of 'approved electronic devices' such as laptops during cruise... but not mobile phones. Jeh 22:43, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm. All of these use picocells aboard the aircraft. The proximity of the picocell allows the mobile phones' to work with very low power output. I believe the question here is rather, how many (or do any) airlines permit you to just use a phone in flight even though the airline has installed no equipment to support their use? Most of the time they won't even work at cruise altitude and speed. Jeh (talk) 04:08, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: "Some airlines do allow use of mobiles phones in flight"

message: Can you talk about the calls received by relatives of the passengers of the Pennsylvania (?) flight on September 11th, the "Let's roll" ones? --84.20.17.84 08:17, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: All but one of those calls, not excepting Todd Beamer's, were made using the seatback phones.  Not much to say there. Jeh 23:08, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 9/11

message: To explain my wholesale reversion... Perhaps "controversy remains", and in fact chaosfreak raises some valid points.  But the rules on NPOV and OR require that you not post your own personal opinions on the matter, nor your own criticisms of other parts of the article. If you wish to present an opposing point of view you must find sources of that point of view OTHER THAN YOURSELF, such as newpaper articles and published reports, and cite them.  n.b.: Writing your personal opinions on a blog page and then citing that doesn't count. Jeh 17:45, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Controversy Remains" - chaosfreak's edits

message: RE: The frequency reuse issue What is the maximum recommended height for using a cellphone ? If someone on top of a high mountain (or even on the top floor of a skyscraper in a densly populated city) uses one could it cause problems ? 80.229.222.48 17:36, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Mobile phones on mountains

message: I have removed the text that claims that the 2003 IEEE Spectrum report shows that cell phones and other electronic devices "can and do interfere with avionics systems."  The IEEE Spectrum report is deeply flawed in its methods... they use dubious statistics and inference based on trends from other industries.  At no point do they ever prove any actual interference.  The only concrete conclusions from the report is that several cell phones are left on on most flights in the United States.
: Your first point seems fine. But re. "deeply flawed," that is your opinion. We have there three degreed professionals in the field, writing in a peer-reviewed journal of the field. If you can find a credible source critiquing the study on that basis, then absolutely, please cite it in the article.  But to put your own critical opinion in the article here is OR. Jeh (talk) 13:16, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  IEEE Spectrum is a magazine published by the IEEE for its membership, and not a peer-reviewed journal like the various Proceedings titles, and thus has review standards more in line with journalistic magazines.  If the article's authors have peer-reviewed papers on the topic, cite those instead. 146.6.200.182 (talk) 18:32, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: IEEE Spectrum Report's Conclusions

message: Do we not add the fact that they now allow mobile phones inside the EU's airspace?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.119.164.117 (talk) 13:13, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Allowed in the EU

message: In the main article, in the technical section, there are only 2 sub-topic (channel re-use, and EM interference).
Why is there not a third section - pertaining to cell tower antenna radiation patterns (and why it is, or is not the case, that cell towers are, or are not, optimized to transmit and receive signals from several miles ABOVE the ground-plane of the tower).  
And possibly, why is there not a 4'th sub-topic, pertaining to the differences between the increasingly defunct analog cell-phone technology (and tri-mode phones) vs digital phone technology, and how that could impact using a cell phone in a plane at 10k to 35k feet.
: The section on channel reuse already needs references. I was going to write the stuff on tower rad patterns, but at first I didn't have refs and I didn't want to add yet another unref'd section. Since then I've collected some refs for the tower radiation patterns but just haven't gotten around to writing the text.
: And yes, the tower patterns intentionally do not cover the sky. The reason is simple: Antenna directionality is how you get antenna gain. Eliminate half of your possible "directions" and you have a 3dB power gain in the directions you are covering. There is no point wasting transmitter power or receiver SNR on an entire hemisphere in which you do not expect any phones to be. 
: And since I thought about it, a 3dB reduction in the above-horizon signal isn't really enough to say "the phones won't work". In practice of course the patterns are not perfect, so you don't even get all of that 3dB. And I can't find a reliable source that says "the phones won't work" because of the tower directionality. I can find refs for the directionality, but not for the "phones won't work" conclusion, so the conclusion would be "original synthesis", which is disallowed here along with original research. 
:: Making an antenna directional, in your example to gain 3 dB of received signal strength, decreases the signal strength in the undesired directions by much more than 3 dB; attenuations of 20 or 40 dB would not be unusual.  What is more likely to happen in this scenario is that the strongest signals at the cell phone will not be towers directly beneath it, but farther off towers which are at shallower angles and thus lower attenuation.  This can exacerbate the channel-sharing problem.  The best data would be call-trace data for a phone call made from an aircraft, showing which towers it was in contact with vs. the aircraft's position. 146.6.200.182 (talk) 19:48, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Your point about analog vs. digital is well taken. There's actually yet another reason for doubting that digital phones will work at jetliner cruise speed and altitude: All digital mobile phone systems (CDMA, GSM, i.Den) include phase shift modulation and this can be thrown off by very small frequency errors... such as would be caused by Doppler shift due to the airplane moving at ~500 mph wrt to the tower. In fact even the movement of a car is problematical. The tower software can compensate for this at up to about 100 mph, but not faster. But I need refs for that one. This btw is why in some of the discussions of 3G and faster data speeds you will frequently see a lower spec for "if in motion", they mean in a car, not walking.  Jeh (talk) 08:04, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I looked up the Doppler effect math and found that you get a Doppler shift of 1.5 kHz when using the 1.9 GHz band in your example assuming worst-case aircraft movement (diving at the tower).  The aircraft traveling directly toward or away from the tower may be the rare case; the windows on the aircraft will likely block towers that are not to the aircraft's sides, for whom Doppler will be minimized.  That all said, there was an article on this, but the server's down right now so I looked at the Google cache.  They cover the Doppler issue, but seem to miss the possibility that Airfone systems are probably designed to deal with larger Doppler shifts than the 480 Hz that cell phones use. 146.6.200.182 (talk) 19:48, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Why no "Signal propagation / antenna radiation pattern" section in the main article?

message: Is it possible to get a signal if it were allowed?
When did it become possible to make a call easily on a commercial airliner flying at high altitude at full speed?
--Rolec Dubbing (talk) 16:47, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: At cruise altitude and speed it isn't impossible but it's quite difficult. Jeh (talk) 23:04, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I used the local picocell facility on an Emirates Airbus between South Africa and Dubai in December 2009 and January 2010. Over South Africa, which has a good gsm network, I made high quality gsm calls via the onboard picocell by Aeromobile. SMS also worked perfectly. Clearly the picocell receiver in the plane was getting a good strong signal. Though the Aeromobile website refers to Inmarsat L as the transmission channel I have my doubts - the system seems to depend on ground facilities not satellite, as there was no coverage over wilderness areas in northern Mozambique and no signal at all over Somalia. Tanzania and Kenya reception worked perfectly as we overflew Dar-es-salaam (TZ) and Mombasa (KE), otherwise the signal was intermittent. Craigallan.za (talk) 20:09, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's fine, but it doesn't say anything about the ability of a mobile phone to get a signal without a picocell. If the system is using ground facilities then it is contacting them with high gain antennas on the outside of the aircraft - the success of that is not relevant to whether an unassisted phone inside the a/c would work. Jeh (talk) 22:00, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

text:  Cell towers transmit primarily horizontally. At low altitude cellular phones work normally. At high altitude, certianly above 10,000 feet, the aircraft may be above the rediated pattern of the cell towers.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Danwoodard (talk • contribs) 21:55, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Is it possible to get a signal if it was allowed?

message: For anyone who may be interested, I will be doing a major copy edit of this article over the next couple of days. This will probably involve cutting some of the content, where I believe cutting will help to make points more clearly. At present I think that the article is very long for its content. If I cannot locate sources for some statements or sections which at present appear to be opinion or unattributed original research, I will probably delete them as being in violation of Wikipedia's policies (either WP:NPOV or WP:NOR).
I will keep an eye on this page, so if you disagree with any of my edits on this article please feel free to raise the issues here rather than simply reverting them. I am approachable, willing to be corrected, and will not take issue with rolling back if need be.
I will also post updates on progress here. David_FLXD (Talk) 20:50, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting. Do you consider yourself at least familiar with RFI/EMI issues? How many relevant ASRS reports have you read? Jeh (talk) 07:31, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Competency is required, but expertise isn't. A good copy editor can certainly improve an article even if he or she knows little to nothing about the subject at hand. Better to wait and criticize edits that are made instead of discouraging them altogether. --BDD (talk) 02:41, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: For Jeh - I have the good English! I watch the Air Crash Investigation show on the tellyvision! Seriously? I know enough about electronics to repair a radar set, and enough about flying to have flown solo. I have no particular axe to grind here, and am more concerned about clarity, intelligibility and quality of spelling and grammar. David_FLXD (Talk) 03:57, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Copy Edit Notice

message: The last three paragraphs of Technical Discussion (surrounded, for some reason, by /* */) read like a rant on a blog. Even just the capitalization warrants rewriting, but the reasoning and math is specious, at best.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.198.105.24 (talk) 15:22, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Technical Discussion has an axe to grind 

message: :Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *Support or *Oppose, then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.
* Oppose I think it would be better to fix this article. And I doubt that such a split will magically make more contributions in the international arena appear, so the non-US article you propose will be quite scant for some time.  Jeh (talk) 06:59, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

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message: Does "mobile phone use" include text messaging? And is it (even technically) against the law to report a hijacking by cell phone, or to coordinate an anti-hijacking plan with these handy little devices? (I wonder if Todd Beamer knew he was breaking the law on 9/11.) --Uncle Ed (talk) 18:46, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Text messaging and hijacking

message: Here is the current lead section:
In the U.S., Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations prohibit the use of mobile phones aboard aircraft in flight. Contrary to popular misconception, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) does not actually prohibit the use of personal electronic devices (including cell phones) on aircraft. Paragraph (b)(5) of 14 CFR 91.21 permits airlines to determine if devices can be used in flight, allowing use of "any other portable electronic device that the operator of the aircraft has determined will not cause interference with the navigation or communication system of the aircraft on which it is to be used."
Right now, the first part of the lead says the FCC bans phones on airplanes, then it says the FAA doesn't ban it, then it says the CFR bans it (not saying under what agency made this regulation). Not to mention it doesn't start out with a general worldwide overview of the topic, starting with the US then going to other regions after that.
It needs to be rewritten, with a starting sentence (with references) such as:
"Mobile phones on aircraft have been regulated since the early days of the mobile phone. Although originally banned on aircraft entirely due to concerns that phones would interfere with safe operation of aircraft, this has been shown to not be a significant risk. Although regulations in some regions have been relaxed, various technical and social factor make the issues more complex than a simple discussion of safety versus hazard." MarkiPoli (talk) 14:55, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Very confusing lead section, needs to be rewritten