Jet pilot or passenger question?

[Bill Greenwood]

Does anyone here fly charter or timeshare or corporate jets? That is non airline, non military, or anyone who rides as a passenger on them?

I'd like to know if they make the same silly announcement to turn off cell phones and I pads, etc, before takeoff and landing?

I really doubt if charter customers paying $thousands are traveling without using their electronic devices.

Thanks

[Flyfalcons]

Yes we do ask them to do that. It's in the regs, we must brief them on PED use during takeoff and landing.

[Bill Greenwood]

Thanks, Ryan.

And other guy:
And no I am not familiar with all the 121&135 ops, since I have only had one short ride on a corp type jet, a small Lear.
How many Rose Parakeet hours have you got?

I was pretty dubious about the whole idea that you could affect the flight of a big jet just with a cell phone or I pad, and I read that 15% of passengers say they don't turn theirs off.
And we don't see these types of planes raining down out of the sky for the most part.

So I gave it a try, just after SWA lifted off from Denver, I snuck my cell phone on, and pointed it up about 10*. And lo and behold, we began to climb. When we got to what I guessed was over 30,000 ', I turned it off and we shortly leveled off. Then maybe 100 miles out of Austin, I turned it on and pointed it slightly downward. And no bull, soon we nosed down and started to descend. When we got a few 1000 feet AGL , I turned it off and again we flew level until final approach to the runway.
I wanted to try a barrel roll on the next flight, but the stew was really mean looking so I didn't want to have her see me.

She was a dead ringer for Geronimo's twin sister, not like the ladies that I knew who flew for the airlines in the good old days.

I guess all that FAA via the airline stew announcement is true; why did I ever doubt it?

[Green Goggles]

I fly with a Garmin 196 in my Mooney. I turned it on once on a Frontier Airlines flight from Denver to San Francisco. When the stewardess saw me with it, she told me to turn it off. When I replied, "Oh no, it's OK, these are specifically designed for aviation use," she didn't find any humor in that whatsoever. Like it was said earlier, airplanes are not falling out of the sky. I am not sure of the reason to prohibit use of such devices. The many times I've flow in a friend's Citation as a passenger, I operated my cell phone and handheld GPS units and we never encountered a bit of trouble.

[Bob Dingley]

Yeah I had to make that silly announcement specificaly re cell phones. I used to fly the S-76A with no problem. Then I got into the C variant that had an upgraded baggage fire warning system. Cell phones triggered the the big red light every time. I was warned about this at Flight Saftey at PBI. Progress is great.

[rwanttaja]

I fly with a Garmin 196 in my Mooney. I turned it on once on a Frontier Airlines flight from Denver to San Francisco. When the stewardess saw me with it, she told me to turn it off. When I replied, "Oh no, it's OK, these are specifically designed for aviation use," she didn't find any humor in that whatsoever. Like it was said earlier, airplanes are not falling out of the sky. I am not sure of the reason to prohibit use of such devices. The many times I've flow in a friend's Citation as a passenger, I operated my cell phone and handheld GPS units and we never encountered a bit of trouble.

The evidence is anecdotal, but there is a lot of it. A lot of pilots have reported that they've encountered some sort of interference that went away when the passenger shut off his phone/ipad/game, etc. Admittedly, the plural of "anecdote" is NOT "Data." But you'll have a hard time getting the powers what be to slack off as long as isolated incidents keep happening. Bob Dingley's story about the S-76 shows that there is some trackable data out there.

The problem is not with a per-spec electronic device, but with the potential problems that may arise on specific units. Ever see a guy with an smart phone or tablet that has a cracked screen but still works? Just because a new-out-of-the-box Ipad doesn't interfere with the aircraft doesn't mean the cracked-screen example won't....

Ron Wanttaja

[rosiejerryrosie]

I am absolutely amazed how we ever got as far as we have without being in constant communications! How did we ever win WWII? Or expand west - why it sometimes took weeks for a letter (you all remember what those were) to get from New York to California. That darned FAA is just trying to make our lives more complex - won't let me use my cell phone to call for a taxi to be ready for me the moment I land at my destination. How inconvenient! Why it might cost me up to fifteen minutes waiting for a taxi!

[Bill Greenwood]

Man, I was excited when I discovered by actual trial that the myth was true, despite seeming illogical and downright silly, that I really did see the 737 going where I pointed my cell phone.

I figured I was about to get rich. All I had to do was give or rather sell this information to the terrorist. Think how valuable it would be to them to know that they didn't have to waste time with underwear bombs, etc. All they needed to target an airliner was 10 guys with cell phones or maybe one guy with 10 cell phones.
And these days, even in time of high worldwide unemployment and extreme fervor for various causes, there may be some limit to the number of fools willing to wear an underwear bomb.

So I looked up Al Qaeda in the yellow pages, but no listing, then on Google but again no phone number or even email. Now I hope to visit D C this spring, so I will go look for their lobbyist there. Most everyone and every cause, no matter how antisocial has a lobbyist in DC.

Now for a few moments I has some pangs of conscience that maybe it would be a selfish act to sell this info to a foreign enemy just for profit, but then I remembered that self interest is called capitalism and is a basis of our society.

[WLIU]

You know, I work in high tech these days so I am surrounded by computer screens all day, cell phones go off even in the men's room, I can fly all the airplanes I want that have glass in the cockpit and new radios that let me monitor two frequencies at once. Against this backdrop it seems luxurious to be able to climb into a basic Pitts Special that has none of that stuff, look at the minimum number of basic steam gauges and maybe a paper chart, and go out and pull G's on my way to nothing more complicated than a hamburger at an airport that I have told no one that I will be at. The cell phone can ring all it wants back in my hangar.

Ain't "progress" wonderful?

Fly safe,

Wes
N78PS

[WLIU]

Getting back to the subject of Personal Electronic Devices in the passenger cabin of transport category aircraft, the regulators move very slowly, but there is motion. In 2008 the RTCA that publishes standards for aircraft electronics among other things published a study regarding PED's in aircraft and electromagnetic interference. If you have access to their publications, it is DO-307. The FAA, responding at its usual swift pace, in 2010 published AC20-164 Design and Demonstrating Aircraft Tolerance to Portable Electronic Devices. Sooo..... This suggests that perhaps new transport category aircraft going forward may be built to allow you to run your cell phone while the crew flys a Cat 2 or 3 approach sometime around 2020.... Or maybe there will be enough passenger demand that Boeing and Airbus will do the analysis and test on older models sometime before that. There is a market demand so maybe they will.

Until then, perhaps the time spent cooped up in the cattle car that we call airborne transportation can be spent in your favorite mediation pose. Me, I started taking the train. Never thought I would do that but it avoids taking my shoes off for the TSA, I can get up and walk around anytime I want, they have real food available, and the seats have twice the elbow and leg room. Its only a few $$ more than airfare. This is what we call progress....

Best of luck,

Wes