The trend was well publicized by actor Alex Baldwin but frequent flyers will find no surprise in the growing numbers of passengers who are refusing to turn off their electronic devices for takeoffs and landings.
A study found flyers are often not following flight attendant warnings despite decades of government warnings, said USA Today.
The investigation, which reviewed thousands of pages of technical documents and surveyed hundreds of frequent fliers, also confirms that the worry about electronics on planes is not baseless: The devices emit radio signals that can interfere with cockpit instruments and flight systems.
"We really need to get the technical findings out to the public and tell them it's dangerous to use their portable electronic devices in-flight," said Bill Strauss. He is an electrical engineer whose doctoral thesis at Carnegie Mellon University studied use of electronic devices in-flight.
Documents reviewed by USA TODAY include: more than 25 papers by electronics experts; presentations, papers and advisories by government aviation officials in the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom and Europe; congressional testimony; and Boeing research and information for airlines.
Fortunately for air travelers, the probability of EMI is small, the technical papers say.
“EMI has not been cited as the cause of any fatal US airline accident, but pilots have reported incidents in which they suspected EMI caused cockpit instruments to go haywire,” the report found.
Some electronics experts — including Douglas Hughes, an electrical engineer who worked for McDonnell Douglas and the Department of Defense— suspect it might have caused military aircraft accidents and been an undetected factor in some airline crashes.
By David Wilkening
