March 1, 2006
Flying
A couple of stories about air travel today.
SkyNews...
- A stewardess caused panic by repeatedly screaming "We're going to crash" when a packed plane hit turbulance.
The Virgin flight hit bad weather three hours into a journey from Gatwick to Las Vegas.
Some passengers were sick and others thrown from their seats as luggage, drinks and trays were tossed around.
Those using the toilet at the time were stuck in the cubicle while others prayed and cried.
And their ordeal was intensified by the screaming stewardess.
Passenger Paul Gibson told The Daily Mirror: "She began screaming every time the plane shook.
"She shouted at the top of her voice, 'We're going to crash! We're going to crash! We're going to crash!"
I've been on flights were I've wanted to yell that, but I'm a civilian. She's a flight services professional.
Plus, it's nearly impossible for a plane to break in mid air in turbulence. Sure, it might feel like it, but it won't happen.
- You might want to think twice the next time you're tempted to make a call from your cell phone during an airplane flight. Or flip on your portable game player. Or work a spreadsheet on your laptop.
Besides possibly annoying fellow travelers and breaking federal regulations, you might be endangering the airplane, according to a Carnegie Mellon University study that quietly monitored transmissions on board a number of flights in the Northeast.
The study, by CMU's Department of Engineering and Public Policy, found that the use of cell phones and other portable electronic devices can interfere with the normal operation of critical airline components, even more so than previously believed.
I was on a flight where a stewardess asked a guy to turn off his laptop's GPS. She claimed the pilots were getting some sort of a red light in the cockpit. Nevermind that GPS is totally passive.
How did she know he had GPS? He had an enormous disk shaped thing suction cupped to the window.... and plugged into his laptop.
On the web Posted by AlexC at March 1, 2006 1:29 PM
I get a little nervous when the pilot starts screaming "We're all gonna die! We're all gonna die!"
Posted by: jk at March 1, 2006 3:30 PMYou gotta love modern alarmist reporting. Surely none of us would read the column if they didn't predict sure death from using your Ipod or laptop on an aircraft. I would love to see the actual report and the techniques used to determine that this "will, in all likelihood, someday cause an accident by interfering with critical cockpit instruments such as GPS receivers." Sorry, but I am an old aircraft guy, I have personally watched technicians from McDonnell Douglas and Apple try to interfere with critical instruments - yes this was before the advent of cell phones and gigahertz processors, but all critical wiring is separately shielded, triply redundant (there are 3 sets) and spaced by requirement certain distances from each other and other cabling. This testing was done many times and there were always a few anomalies, but never any disruptive interference. The FAA regulations have just always chosen to err on the side of safety and so the prohibition during take-off and landing (I think under 10,000 ft is the actual requirement) has stood. As for the red light in the cockpit I will have to assume that the flight attendant was just bluffing to add weight to her request.
Ah well, every few years I see on TV news or in print cautions to check with your airline before traveling with a pet in the cargo compartment to be sure their cargo area is pressurized and heated. Here's a quick answer, they all are. When an aircraft is pressurized, the whole fuselage is the pressure vessel (the whole cylindrical or basically cylindrical structure) capped by special pressure bulkheads at the fore and aft of the aircraft. The floor that you walk on and is the divider between you and the cargo compartment is not a pressure bulkhead - pressure vessels whether an aircraft or a scuba tank are cylindrical for some very basic engineering reasons. All cargo compartments get some heat as well, they may not be as toasty as the passenger compartment but Fido will not freeze. The average outside air temp at 30,000 ft is about 50 below zero. Next time you pick up your luggage think about what it would feel like if it had really spent the last 5 hours at 50 below.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at March 2, 2006 3:33 PMSilence is right. There is nothing in this story that refers to examination of the aircraft systems response to the "problematic" emissions from consumer electronic devices. I intend to seek out this report in IEEE Spectrum and see what it really says. If it really says what the journalist wrote then I fear it's a case of "we need more federal funding for additional study at our prestigous research university." If the journalist has misrepresented the findings then I'll attribute it to his possibly well-placed fear of what such emissions might do to aircraft manufactured by Airbus Industrie.
Posted by: johngalt at March 4, 2006 10:04 AM | What do you think? [3]