Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com say they're welcome to text stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Bultium, And today we
Speaker 1: wanted to look at a topic that has a lot
Speaker 1: of our listeners interested. I mean they We received requests
Speaker 1: on this multiple times. Yes, I think that I requested
Speaker 1: this for myself because it's a topic of interest, certainly
Speaker 1: with the amount of flying that I do on occasion. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about electronics and the F A, A
Speaker 1: and E, M, I and other uh initialisms occasionally acronyms.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So we're talking about why is it that
Speaker 1: you can use certain electronics on a plane at certain times,
Speaker 1: other times you're not allowed to use them unless you
Speaker 1: reach a certain altitude, and some you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: use at all. And is playing the Jeweled on your phone?
Speaker 1: Um really going to make the plane crash? Yeah? Uh.
Speaker 1: And so we're going to cover all that now. Long
Speaker 1: time listeners of tech stuff are going to say, hey,
Speaker 1: didn't didn't you Jonathan and and Chris do something about
Speaker 1: this long time ago? And the truth is, yes, we
Speaker 1: did do an episode where we talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about electronics and planes. But the stories has developed over
Speaker 1: the years since we recorded that episode. In fact, there
Speaker 1: was a report in June two thousand and thirteen. That's
Speaker 1: the year in which we are recording this podcast, right,
Speaker 1: just a couple months back where we are recording this
Speaker 1: at the beginning of September, by the way, yep and
Speaker 1: uh and so back in June, there was this report
Speaker 1: that initially had everyone all excited because it sounded like
Speaker 1: the f a A it was going to lift restrictions
Speaker 1: on certain electronics during takeoff and landing, meaning that you
Speaker 1: would not have to switch your kindle or your tablet
Speaker 1: off before the plane was leading the gate right right
Speaker 1: up until you know, right now, they usually have you
Speaker 1: turned everything off before you reach ten thousand feet, right,
Speaker 1: and at that point then you can turn the cruising
Speaker 1: altitude at which you can turn on approved electronic electronics. Right.
Speaker 1: There's a little airplane mode and there's a list of
Speaker 1: approved electronic devices that you can find in whatever, in
Speaker 1: the back of your whatever brand magazine, yeah, whatever whatever
Speaker 1: airline you happen to be on. So there was there
Speaker 1: was talk that they were going to lift those restrictions
Speaker 1: and not necessarily lift them on all electronics. So in
Speaker 1: other words, things like cell phones may still not be
Speaker 1: allowed to be used outside of airplane mode, but other
Speaker 1: electronic devices would be allowable even when you were below
Speaker 1: ten thousand feet. However, shortly after that, I think in July,
Speaker 1: at some point um that A sort of said, hey,
Speaker 1: we were we need more time to look at this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were saying like like it is long overdue for
Speaker 1: us to look at the effects. However, that being said
Speaker 1: that we want to do extensive testing before we just
Speaker 1: say yes, it's it's perfectly fine. Right, So the official
Speaker 1: report is due out sometime this month supposedly. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: maybe by the time you hear this podcast, it may
Speaker 1: be that we have an official word from the f
Speaker 1: a A. But in case that would be really terrific
Speaker 1: news gathering on on our party. Well it's just from
Speaker 1: the incredible past. Yes, yes, and in which case you
Speaker 1: you might say, like, wow, this this episode is a
Speaker 1: quaint that they're talking about this thing. Um, but we
Speaker 1: still need to talk about why is there a concern
Speaker 1: in the first place. And it all boils down to
Speaker 1: electromagnetic interference or e M I. What is em I? Jonathan, So, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you may have heard about this relationship between electricity and magnetism.
Speaker 1: We've talked about it once or twice per episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that kind of makes electronics work. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, electric motors and dynamos are all based off
Speaker 1: this relationship between electricity and magnetism. And of course the
Speaker 1: basic way of demonstrating this is using an electromagnet, which
Speaker 1: we have all played with at some point or another.
Speaker 1: I'm sure even if you don't know it, but if
Speaker 1: you've ever built one, you know it's simple. You take
Speaker 1: like an iron nail and you wrap some copper wire
Speaker 1: around it in several coils, and then you run a
Speaker 1: current through that copper wire. It will magnetize the nail
Speaker 1: so that you can use it like a magnet. You
Speaker 1: can pick up iron filings, anything that's you know that
Speaker 1: ferro magnetic uh feature to it. You can manipulate until
Speaker 1: you disconnect the battery, right, in which case the flow
Speaker 1: of electrons ends through that that copper wire and eventually
Speaker 1: the magnetic properties fade away. Now, also you can end
Speaker 1: up moving a copper wire through a magnetic field, especially
Speaker 1: a fluctuating magnetic field, and that will induce electricity to
Speaker 1: flow through the wire. So any sort of conductor actually,
Speaker 1: this will happen if a conductor moves through a fluctuating
Speaker 1: magnetic field, that will induce an electric current to flow
Speaker 1: through that conductor. So this is just that basic relationship
Speaker 1: between magnetism and electricity. Again, so many our electronics really
Speaker 1: depend upon this. And you need the voltage and current.
Speaker 1: So current is the actual flow voltage. Voltage is the
Speaker 1: difference in potential. Right, It's like you know, you get
Speaker 1: voltage if you plug a lamp into a wall socket,
Speaker 1: but you don't get current until you switch the lamp
Speaker 1: on exactly. And then once you switch that lamp on,
Speaker 1: if you were to have some sort of detector, an
Speaker 1: e m I detector near that that wire, it would
Speaker 1: detect the magnetic field. It would actually be or buzz
Speaker 1: or whatever. And in fact, I've seen kits where or
Speaker 1: or instructions online where you can build your own e
Speaker 1: m I detector out of like an ur Duino controller
Speaker 1: and something like under an hour. Yeah yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 1: if you ever want a fun and I know that
Speaker 1: that's fun and quotation marks for some of you, but
Speaker 1: a fun programming projects something that's very simple, Uh, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of guides online to building a em
Speaker 1: I detector using in our dwino as the brains of it,
Speaker 1: a few other pieces. It's a really clear one and um,
Speaker 1: I believe popular mechanics while I was researching for this episode.
Speaker 1: So I'll see if I can remember to link that
Speaker 1: on Twitter, right, right, and so anyway, the key here
Speaker 1: and the reason why you would want an eam I
Speaker 1: detected a couple of reasons. One is that maybe you
Speaker 1: want to see if any of your devices are using
Speaker 1: what we call vampire power. That's when the device is
Speaker 1: continuing to consume electricity even when it's turned off. Right,
Speaker 1: it's plugged in but still running. Yeah, so there are
Speaker 1: a lot of TVs, for example, that have vampire power issues.
Speaker 1: They don't when you turn them off. They're not really
Speaker 1: all the way off. And the reason for that is
Speaker 1: so that when you turn your television on, the screen
Speaker 1: comes on quickly, and it's because there was already a
Speaker 1: low level amount of power being supplied to the set.
Speaker 1: If you were to turn that power completely off, the
Speaker 1: warm up time would be a little longer, and as
Speaker 1: we know, customers get a little antsy if they have
Speaker 1: to wait for the t vs right that, or I
Speaker 1: think some fluorescent bulbs work on similar principles, right. So,
Speaker 1: so in other words, if you want to be greener
Speaker 1: or you want to save money on your electric bill,
Speaker 1: and e m I detector will tell you which devices
Speaker 1: are still consuming power and if you like, you could
Speaker 1: set those up on a power strip that is that
Speaker 1: will truly turn off, because there are plenty of those
Speaker 1: on the market to where you can buy a power strip,
Speaker 1: plug your devices that use vampire power into that, and
Speaker 1: then you just use the power strip to turn shut
Speaker 1: it off, you know, shut off the real z. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that way you don't have to worry about any
Speaker 1: more power consumption. Another reason you might worry about e
Speaker 1: m I is if you have a medical device that
Speaker 1: is sensitive to such things like a pacemaker. So people
Speaker 1: with pacemakers can experience problems that pacemakers can can experience
Speaker 1: conflicting information when you encounter something like electromagnetic radiation. Right.
Speaker 1: The way that pacemakers work is it detects your heartbeat,
Speaker 1: and so if it runs into some a some e
Speaker 1: m I, it could misinterpret that as either a faulty
Speaker 1: heartbeat and and if it's connected to a defilibrator give
Speaker 1: you an unwanted electric shock or even possibly misinterpreted as
Speaker 1: a healthy heartbeat, and miss giving you a shock that
Speaker 1: you need right exactly. So this is why you hear
Speaker 1: about people with pacemakers having to be very careful about
Speaker 1: the kind of electronics they come into contact with. Usually
Speaker 1: there are very uh simple rules that they follow, things
Speaker 1: like if you if you've got a cell phone, you
Speaker 1: don't let the cell phone get within say six inches
Speaker 1: of where the device is. That kind of thing. For
Speaker 1: the most part, it's not a very big deal. It's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that you know, the guidelines are like, well,
Speaker 1: keep your arc welders a good twelve inches away from
Speaker 1: your chest and don't use a jackhammer. But but but
Speaker 1: these are things that obviously, you know, you're talking about
Speaker 1: matters of life and death. So clearly that's why you
Speaker 1: get these these precautions there. Some of them are perhaps
Speaker 1: overly cautious, but it's in the sense of the just
Speaker 1: to make sure a person maintains, uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: healthy life. This device and you know, anything like a
Speaker 1: like a cell phone. If you've ever put your cell
Speaker 1: phone too close to your computer speakers, especially if you
Speaker 1: have external computer speakers and they're plugged in. If you've
Speaker 1: bought a pair of speakers that you plug in through
Speaker 1: say a headphone jack, and you have ever had your
Speaker 1: phone near them, and you hear this weird kind of
Speaker 1: electronic stuttering noise goes like dad date Like that sounds
Speaker 1: like someone's trying to uh. That actually is due to
Speaker 1: electromagnetic interference. It's when your phone is either sending out
Speaker 1: or receiving data. So for example, if you're getting text
Speaker 1: messages or that sort of thing, Um, it's those radio
Speaker 1: waves that and the signals coming from the phone are
Speaker 1: interfering with the actual uh fields that are being generated
Speaker 1: by those wires. Now, you can create really well shielded
Speaker 1: wires that that block a lot of this interference. Fair
Speaker 1: day cage technology has come a very very very long
Speaker 1: way since Mr Faraday. Yeah, so we are able to
Speaker 1: insulate wires really well so that one we prevent leakage,
Speaker 1: because that is a thing where where electronics can leak
Speaker 1: electrons and thus either have errors or they're less efficient
Speaker 1: as far as power goes. And you can also block interference.
Speaker 1: So if you've got a really nice pair of speakers
Speaker 1: or headphones or whatever, it is then that's going to
Speaker 1: block a lot more of that E m I and
Speaker 1: you're not going to get those weird little stuttering noises.
Speaker 1: Uh So the reason why we're even mentioning this is
Speaker 1: that on your typical aircraft, there are a few different
Speaker 1: systems that use wires, all of them. As as it
Speaker 1: turns out, an aircraft is made of electronics, and you know,
Speaker 1: the the radio when it's talking to ground control and
Speaker 1: air traffic, the radar, which you know gets the plane places,
Speaker 1: which is kind of import sure. Yeah, there's uh there's
Speaker 1: a specific kind of radio, a c n S radio
Speaker 1: also known as communication navigation surveillance radio that's getting navigation
Speaker 1: information as the aircraft is traveling. That's a very important
Speaker 1: piece of equipment. And there are other things as well
Speaker 1: that could in theory be affected by electronics and specifically
Speaker 1: electromagnetic interference. So if you have a device that gives
Speaker 1: off a great deal of E m I and you
Speaker 1: happen to be in an area where you are near
Speaker 1: the circuit, yeah, then you could introduce some interference. So
Speaker 1: that's the biggest fear, right. Well, here's the thing is
Speaker 1: that most aircraft are shielded pretty well against this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. But it's the the concern is still there
Speaker 1: because again you're talking about a maybe it's a low risk,
Speaker 1: but it's a high impact problem obviously, so it may
Speaker 1: not happen frequently, but if it does happen, that could
Speaker 1: be catastrophic, which again is why we have these these
Speaker 1: really tie restrictions on electronics. It's not so much that, uh,
Speaker 1: they are that the government is unaware. The f a
Speaker 1: A is unaware that most electronic devices put out a
Speaker 1: very very tiny footprint when it comes to this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. They're aware of that, but they're also aware
Speaker 1: that the the potential outcome of a worst case scenario
Speaker 1: is absolutely catastrophic. So with that in mind, that's when
Speaker 1: you you know, you have to try and prevent the
Speaker 1: worst case scenario from happening. Now, all of this dates
Speaker 1: back to the nineteen sixties really, and that's when it
Speaker 1: became pretty clear that handheld electronic devices could be an issue.
Speaker 1: You see, there are different sources of em my interference
Speaker 1: or about the same thing, is the same thing as
Speaker 1: a t M machine or interfere my interference. Okay, there's
Speaker 1: several sources of em I, not just your you know,
Speaker 1: cell phone or your e reader or tablet or whatever.
Speaker 1: There's stuff like lightning. Yeah, and and records about that
Speaker 1: go back to about the nineteen thirties, I think is
Speaker 1: when we started having in the United States anyway f
Speaker 1: A regulations about how to protect planes from lightning strikes.
Speaker 1: Right now, you know, lightning is a very powerful, powerful thing.
Speaker 1: Obviously you're talking about incredible amounts of energy when with
Speaker 1: the typical lightning strike, but even today, like if you
Speaker 1: were to talk about a direct lightning strike, because planes
Speaker 1: do get hit by lightning. If you were if you
Speaker 1: were in a plane and you got hit by lightning,
Speaker 1: that lightning is going to have a minimal impact on
Speaker 1: the aircraft because aircraft have been designed since the thirties
Speaker 1: to resist lightning strikes, to to be able to continue
Speaker 1: operation with minimal if any interruption in any kind of service,
Speaker 1: to make sure that you know, we can get there
Speaker 1: safely from point A to point B. And so I've
Speaker 1: actually been in a plane that's been struck by lightning.
Speaker 1: I sitting at a window seat right there by the wing.
Speaker 1: It was spectacular. Spectacular sounds like one word for it.
Speaker 1: But and I was a kid at the time. I
Speaker 1: just thought it was cool, but the kid that would
Speaker 1: be great, and nothing nothing happened, Like there's not a
Speaker 1: flicker of lights, nothing, nothing scary happened other than the
Speaker 1: fact that I saw lightning hit the plane, um, which
Speaker 1: certain some of our listeners would argue is terrifying, but
Speaker 1: I thought it was kind of cool at the time.
Speaker 1: But other things too, Right, well, as we started developing
Speaker 1: more portable electronics and I'm not talking about your your iPhone,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about radio and electronic devices that helped to
Speaker 1: um autonomize flight. Oh yes, which which is what started
Speaker 1: happening in the sixties, which is why these regulations started
Speaker 1: popping up. Sure, yeah, that was the rise of two
Speaker 1: different things, just like you were pointing out the fact
Speaker 1: that we were getting things like like the automatic pilot
Speaker 1: type of technology, as well as the fact that the
Speaker 1: transistor had suddenly made electronics portable. Right, that whole thing,
Speaker 1: that that thing where computers no longer had to be
Speaker 1: the size of say, an airplane, they could be a
Speaker 1: little bit smaller. Or a radio radio is the size
Speaker 1: of your television console, which is also the size of
Speaker 1: your Cadillac. Yeah. Right. Also, did I just say autonomate
Speaker 1: because that's amazing. Well, hey, all I can tell you
Speaker 1: is that I come from a suburban area. Longtime listeners
Speaker 1: of tech stuff will appreciate that reference. I still haven't
Speaker 1: lived that one down, but yeah, we're talking about the
Speaker 1: fact that that you suddenly had people capable of bringing
Speaker 1: electronic devices aboard a plane on their person because now
Speaker 1: they were small enough to do that, and we had
Speaker 1: these more sensitive devices that were part of plane systems,
Speaker 1: and it became clear that a something as simple as
Speaker 1: a compact radio receiver could interfere with VHF omni ranging
Speaker 1: navigation systems aboard and aircraft. These were studies being done
Speaker 1: by NASA at the time. Yeah, NASA did this, and
Speaker 1: so did the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics did one,
Speaker 1: which at the time was still a actual part of
Speaker 1: the government. I think at this point in time it's
Speaker 1: a independent, not for profit company that is tasked with
Speaker 1: all of their research that the FAA wants done. So
Speaker 1: the the big paper that came out in the sixties
Speaker 1: that kind of set the rules for what we think
Speaker 1: of today, as you know, follow these instructions and you
Speaker 1: can use electronic devices. The paper is called Interference to
Speaker 1: Aircraft Electronic equipment from devices carried aboard. So that's where
Speaker 1: we got this idea that personal electronic devices or peds
Speaker 1: p e d s are a potential source of malfunction
Speaker 1: or dysfunction aboard and aircraft. So it's a complicated issue
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies and got more complicated because that's
Speaker 1: when the aircraft industry really began to look at other
Speaker 1: sources of e m I, not just lightning strikes, but
Speaker 1: things like broadcast hours. We have all these different radio towers,
Speaker 1: television towers, communication towers that are sending out vast amounts
Speaker 1: of information via radio. Right. The nineteen seventies was also,
Speaker 1: if you remember from our recent Cutting the Cord Cable podcast,
Speaker 1: that was when many cable companies started um started transmitting
Speaker 1: to larger areas. Yeah, so we've got all these different
Speaker 1: potential sources of e m I, and again the aircraft
Speaker 1: needed to be shielded against that sort of stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then then again around two thousand three and two thousand four,
Speaker 1: when we started seeing more, uh more cellular phones being
Speaker 1: carried onto planes, that was when we started getting a
Speaker 1: few studies about these um they call them a transmitting
Speaker 1: pads or tea pads. Right, which which are transmitting signals
Speaker 1: on purpose. Right, So you've got two different kinds of pads. Then, right,
Speaker 1: you've personal electron devices. You've got your kind that will
Speaker 1: transmit information or or at least rather transmit electromagnetic and
Speaker 1: interference simply through the operation. But they're not it's that's
Speaker 1: not their main purpose. It's just a byproduct by the
Speaker 1: fact that they are electronics. And then you have the
Speaker 1: the transmitting ones that are specifically things like radios or
Speaker 1: cell phones, that kind of stuff that are emitting and
Speaker 1: receiving radio waves or other signals. So, uh, if you
Speaker 1: look at your list of approved electronic devices, you're gonna
Speaker 1: see a lot of the pads on there, and uh,
Speaker 1: for the ones that don't make the list, you're gonna
Speaker 1: see some teap heads on there. Although there's some changes
Speaker 1: obviously because now we have things like WiFi aboard planes,
Speaker 1: and WiFi allows us to use things like you can
Speaker 1: use a cell phone in airplane mode that can connect
Speaker 1: via WiFi, or you can use a laptop that has WiFi.
Speaker 1: So there's some confusion here, at least among the consumer level,
Speaker 1: about well, why can I use these devices that do
Speaker 1: have wireless communication standards attached to them, but not these
Speaker 1: other devices that use different anders. And further complicating it,
Speaker 1: there's some international flights that will allow you to use
Speaker 1: a cellular phone for cellular purposes on on a flight,
Speaker 1: but it's a in that specific case, they're connecting to
Speaker 1: a ground station that is capable of dealing with the
Speaker 1: fact that that you're in a five mile per hour
Speaker 1: what's that like, eight hundred kilometer per hour moving airplane,
Speaker 1: otherwise you're gonna start mucking up the cellular system. Well,
Speaker 1: the fact that you'd be doing those handshakes every five
Speaker 1: seconds as you move from one cellular tower to another.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's that's also the way that if you've
Speaker 1: ever been on a plane that had a phone in
Speaker 1: the back of one of the seats in front of you,
Speaker 1: where you could swipe your credit card and use the phone,
Speaker 1: same sort of thing, where it was using specific ground uh.
Speaker 1: I don't think any of them were satellite phones that
Speaker 1: would have been pretty incredible, but I think all of
Speaker 1: them used the ground central control thing where you would,
Speaker 1: depending upon your position among your flight, you would call
Speaker 1: into a very specific station. They were also really expensive.
Speaker 1: Um so NASA when it was looking at em I threats.
Speaker 1: It classifies threats in three ways. It looks at the source,
Speaker 1: the path, and the victim. So the source is whatever
Speaker 1: device is actually generating the e m I. The path
Speaker 1: is how that e m I travels through space, whether
Speaker 1: it's radiating out from the device itself or whether it
Speaker 1: is connected to a to a power line, to a
Speaker 1: ground line. Right, yeah, whether it's transmitting ground line doesn't
Speaker 1: count in there. Well, if it's if it's connected to
Speaker 1: the power source of the plane, or if it's connected
Speaker 1: directly into some other system of the plane. Because we're
Speaker 1: not just talking about the electronics that we carry on board.
Speaker 1: There are electronic devices that are that the crew are
Speaker 1: using that that can connect directly to flight systems, uh,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But how does that e m
Speaker 1: I travel from the device? And in the case of
Speaker 1: all p e D s, really we're talking radiating here,
Speaker 1: it's it's not directly connected to the flight systems. And
Speaker 1: then the victim is whatever system would be affected by that.
Speaker 1: And again, when we were talking about the different systems
Speaker 1: that could be affected on a plane, one of the
Speaker 1: most um vulnerable really traditionally at any rate, is that communication, navigation,
Speaker 1: surveillance radio, the CNS radio. So this is one that
Speaker 1: of course the name kind of gives it away. It
Speaker 1: gets it's part of the navigation system for the plane.
Speaker 1: And errors from e m I could mean that the
Speaker 1: pilot has erroneous information or that some of his instruments
Speaker 1: or her instruments are not properly displaying the right kinds
Speaker 1: of data, which could lead to uh to human error,
Speaker 1: or it could actually lead to another Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: computer might might suddenly and see that there are changing
Speaker 1: parameters and try to adjust for that, when in fact
Speaker 1: that parameters aren't changing. So that's where the concern is,
Speaker 1: but doesn't really happen. Well, we'll get into the actual
Speaker 1: results sort of things. Talk about some actual reported assumed incidents.
Speaker 1: In some case some some studies, there's little quote marks
Speaker 1: in the air that have been Yeah, but with some
Speaker 1: some studies that have been done. We'll talk about those
Speaker 1: in just a minute. But first let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor, and now let's get back
Speaker 1: to some e m I information. Some let's really talk
Speaker 1: about what the documented incidents like, actual documented cases of
Speaker 1: personal electronic devices causing problems with aircraft. Technically, there are none.
Speaker 1: I've got a whole bunch of documented ones that maybe Okay,
Speaker 1: it depends on it depends on what we mean by documented,
Speaker 1: because in all of these cases, we're we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about studies from several different organizations, and um, as
Speaker 1: far as I have read, none of them were reproducible
Speaker 1: in a lab setting. Right. See, here's the problem is
Speaker 1: that a lot of these are What happens is some
Speaker 1: error happens, right, something goes wrong on the plane, and
Speaker 1: then they start to look for the cause. So this
Speaker 1: is where we get the effect, and then we're looking
Speaker 1: for the cause. And in those cases, someone aboard the
Speaker 1: plane was identified as being as using a device near
Speaker 1: wiring that would have mattered, and so the while there's
Speaker 1: no direct evidence supporting the fact that the device caused
Speaker 1: the error, that was the conclusion drawn in these incident reports.
Speaker 1: So it may very well be that the reports and
Speaker 1: what happened have nothing to do with each other. It
Speaker 1: may be that the cause of these errors was completely
Speaker 1: independent of any sort of personal electronic device use. And
Speaker 1: in fact, like you said, Lauren, when it comes to
Speaker 1: trying to reproduce season in the lab settings, we're having
Speaker 1: some trouble getting stuff to go wrong on purpose. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think MythBusters did a full episode on this too,
Speaker 1: where they showed that the devices just don't generate signals
Speaker 1: powerful enough to really interfere with the typical systems you
Speaker 1: find aboard a plane today. Now, granted, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: if we go back five decades, it's a different story.
Speaker 1: But today we've got planes that are shielded against broadcast
Speaker 1: transmissions and lightning strikes. Most of them can handle it.
Speaker 1: If you turn the page so you can find out
Speaker 1: if Tyrian lives another day spoiler alert. No, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna do it, you guys, You guys just have to wait.
Speaker 1: Because George R. Arman and I were buddies, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm just just don't get too attached, That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And and and I do want to say that the
Speaker 1: best correlations that I've read about happened around the midnighteteen
Speaker 1: nineties um as a more powerful transmitting personal electronic devices
Speaker 1: were coming out, but perhaps before planes had started taking
Speaker 1: into account the fact that a lot of passengers would
Speaker 1: have had those right right, so so so there in
Speaker 1: the past there could have been some truly legitimate incidents
Speaker 1: that we're going to be talking about. In fact, one
Speaker 1: of the things I'm going to talk about specifically looked
Speaker 1: at UH incidents between n six and nine. Now that's
Speaker 1: before the smartphone explosion in the in the consumer marketplace, right,
Speaker 1: We've got to go to about two thousand seven when
Speaker 1: the iPhone started coming out to really get to that.
Speaker 1: It's before tablets, not technically, before tablets were more, tablets
Speaker 1: were really a thing. Even your laptop in that area
Speaker 1: era was not the easiest thing to carry onto a plane.
Speaker 1: But between eighty six and nine, according to NASA, there
Speaker 1: were one eighteen e m I incidents on planes due
Speaker 1: to pe D interference. UM eighteen is not a lot,
Speaker 1: but for than for more than a decade, for all flights.
Speaker 1: I mean there are thousands of flights a day. Then
Speaker 1: you multiply that by how many days they are in
Speaker 1: a year, multiply that by how many years in this study,
Speaker 1: and it's a tiny, tiny amount of incidents. And you
Speaker 1: think about this, I'm guessing that electronics use is not
Speaker 1: that rare aboard a plane. But anyway, at eighteen, about
Speaker 1: twenty five of those actually twenty five of those exactly
Speaker 1: where cell phone related twenty five were laptop related, fourteen
Speaker 1: were related to electronic games, thirteen were tape recorder related,
Speaker 1: thirteen were radio related, twelve were not identified at all,
Speaker 1: seven were CD players and other devices included a dictaphone.
Speaker 1: How it really was the eighties, I can't can you
Speaker 1: imagine saying next to someone on a plane who's using
Speaker 1: a dictaphone? I can imagine that calculator, portable TV, and
Speaker 1: one Baldwin who refused to turn his electronic device off
Speaker 1: despite being told multiple times to do so. Um, that
Speaker 1: actually is not true. I'm just making that part up
Speaker 1: because that happened later. So by comparison, Uh, there's another
Speaker 1: report that the f A a put out that looked
Speaker 1: at flights between ninety one and two thousand thirteen that
Speaker 1: identified one thirty five incidents. And again, now here here
Speaker 1: we have more than two decades of flights and a
Speaker 1: hundred thirty five incidents. Um, and it's just like you said, Lauren,
Speaker 1: none of these were necessarily connected by evidence. It was
Speaker 1: all anecdotal. Really, it was the idea that something has
Speaker 1: gone wrong with the instrumentation. Uh. The flight attendants and
Speaker 1: the crew in general started looking to see if anyone
Speaker 1: was using an electried device, asked them to turn it off,
Speaker 1: and then said things were fine afterwards. But this does
Speaker 1: not necessarily mean that there's a causation issue. There, there's
Speaker 1: a correlation issue. We see these two things co related
Speaker 1: because they're happening at the same time in the same place,
Speaker 1: but that does not necessarily mean that one caused the other,
Speaker 1: right right, Um. There was an independent study done by
Speaker 1: Boeing on um. They received were that that a customers
Speaker 1: um quote unquote palm top computer palm top I love
Speaker 1: that term um anyway had had had caused the airplane
Speaker 1: to initiate a shallow bank turn, and turning the device
Speaker 1: off made it stop, turning it back on made it
Speaker 1: start up again. And and so they were like, no,
Speaker 1: this looks like a thing. But again, in in a
Speaker 1: in a laboratory situation, they tried they bought versions of
Speaker 1: whatever palm top computer device were in use, and and
Speaker 1: tried to make it happen again and could not. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and other studies seemed to follow that same anecdotal approach.
Speaker 1: The International Air Transport Association released a paper talking about
Speaker 1: seventy five cases of aircraft dysfunction between two thousand three
Speaker 1: and two thousand nine. Uh, now that's a six year
Speaker 1: span right there, in seventy five cases, and six years,
Speaker 1: while still very very tiny, is more. That's more frequently
Speaker 1: than the other two studies had indicated. But even this
Speaker 1: report was just based on airline cruise beliefs that specific
Speaker 1: malfunctions were due to the use of electrying devices on board. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: the last time that an official study was done by
Speaker 1: the f A A by specifically that Radio Technical Commission
Speaker 1: for Aeronautics or I think it's just called r t
Speaker 1: c A these days these days since it's a private corporation. Now, Um,
Speaker 1: they did a study also from two thousand three to
Speaker 1: two thousand nine and concluded that there was insufficient information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is always my favorite, my favorite kind of conclusion.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite kind whenever I'm searching for something specific
Speaker 1: online and it's just that I have either mispelled something
Speaker 1: or put things that make sense to Jonathan but not
Speaker 1: to the rest of the world. Uh. Yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that one of the cases that they talked
Speaker 1: about in that I a t A report was that
Speaker 1: when a laptop was being used, a plane's clock started
Speaker 1: to spend backwards. But I think there might also have
Speaker 1: been a doctor on board that plane, perhaps with the
Speaker 1: song Screwdriver um, or maybe they were they were really
Speaker 1: close to this, to this weird island that a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of people got lost on this one time. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know. I only watched the first
Speaker 1: six episodes of that series, so I only kind of
Speaker 1: get that reference. Yeah, these are again the the fact
Speaker 1: that there were things that happened in the field or
Speaker 1: in the air if you prefer, um that that leads
Speaker 1: us to have some concern obviously, but when it comes
Speaker 1: down to trying to actually track down the cause, it
Speaker 1: seems like we're going down a rabbit hole now. Uh.
Speaker 1: Passenger behavior suggests that maybe we really need to just
Speaker 1: concentrate on shielding the heck out of all the airplane
Speaker 1: systems and just go ahead and assume that people are
Speaker 1: going to use their electronics whenever they want, no matter
Speaker 1: what the rules happened to say, because spoiler alert, that's
Speaker 1: kind of what's happening already. Um. The f f a
Speaker 1: A again did a survey of passengers and found that
Speaker 1: only six past years report following the instructions to turn
Speaker 1: off all electronic devices before take off and before landing. UM.
Speaker 1: So that means just under half are not doing that.
Speaker 1: Shame on you. I'm granted. If the rules are silly,
Speaker 1: let's let's change the rules. The follow the rules. I'm lawful,
Speaker 1: evil it's it's it's difficult sometimes. I mean, for for example,
Speaker 1: I have a kindle and um, it is this specific
Speaker 1: kind of kindle does not have an off button. It
Speaker 1: is physically impossible to turn it off. I can turn
Speaker 1: off the Wi Fi function um, which I usually keep
Speaker 1: off to save the battery life. But U but it
Speaker 1: drives me crazy that if I'm sitting there and reading
Speaker 1: a book and minding my own business, you know, and
Speaker 1: and a well meaning flight attendants will say, hey, turn
Speaker 1: that off, and I say, I'll shut it right now. Now.
Speaker 1: You have stopped me from reading the thing I was reading.
Speaker 1: But I was not using any power. I wasn't using
Speaker 1: any power. And it's not going to make a difference
Speaker 1: in the power or usage whether whether I close the
Speaker 1: cover and put it down or not. It's you're you're
Speaker 1: only preventing me from doing something that I enjoy. Well,
Speaker 1: the only time that you consume any power with an
Speaker 1: e reader that doesn't have its wife I turned on
Speaker 1: is when you turn a page, because that has to
Speaker 1: regenerate that inc but once the ink is in place,
Speaker 1: then it's set. It doesn't need to continually, you know,
Speaker 1: exert power to do that. That's why E reader battery
Speaker 1: life is so incredible compared to other electronics. As long
Speaker 1: as they're using E paper, right, as long as they're
Speaker 1: using the ink or E paper, then that's why. Um So,
Speaker 1: the fact that passenger behavior has shown that people are
Speaker 1: unwilling to turn things off, whether it's on purpose or
Speaker 1: just through lack of attention or whatever, that suggests to
Speaker 1: me that we have to really look at you know,
Speaker 1: you just have to assume that people are using electronics
Speaker 1: on board that plane, no matter what the rules are,
Speaker 1: because otherwise, if you don't assume that, you're not going
Speaker 1: to take the precautions necessary to make sure that the
Speaker 1: flight is as safe as possible. To be fair, these
Speaker 1: devices are useful to the staffs of airplanes as well,
Speaker 1: and in fact, many people do use them right right
Speaker 1: on American airlines. I think they use iPads in the
Speaker 1: cockpit in order to not have to tote around those
Speaker 1: giant paper manuals all the time. And uh, and that
Speaker 1: he does have like a six month clearance process for
Speaker 1: forgetting that approved UM through rigorous testing. But I feel
Speaker 1: like once you've approved cockpit use for a tablet, it
Speaker 1: should be you would think that most of the gauges
Speaker 1: at least are I certainly have fewer of them on
Speaker 1: my seat when I fly. It's so irritating when the
Speaker 1: pilot comes back into Row thirty eight and leans over
Speaker 1: and says, I just need to look at something really
Speaker 1: quickly to make sure that we're going the right way
Speaker 1: and it goes up. I hate that, you know, especially
Speaker 1: for those short flights. It's just it's ridiculous. UM. Yeah, no, clearly,
Speaker 1: I agree, and we do think that we're going to
Speaker 1: see some looser restrictions on what what devices you can
Speaker 1: use and when you can use them. I think that
Speaker 1: cell phones are going to probably be the longest hold
Speaker 1: out UM, at least in the the United States. Like you said, Lauren,
Speaker 1: there are some other airlines international airlines that allow cell
Speaker 1: phone use, but the U S it's has resisted at
Speaker 1: quite I think I think it would be a matter
Speaker 1: of putting down the infrastructure, and that at the current
Speaker 1: moment there's not enough UM perceived benefit to actually put
Speaker 1: forth the money to do so. I think most I
Speaker 1: think most, Um, I don't know that most people. I
Speaker 1: think there are plenty of people who share my mindset,
Speaker 1: which is that please don't let people talk on the
Speaker 1: phone on the plane. Please. Certainly, unless I had significantly
Speaker 1: more space around me on an airplane, I would not
Speaker 1: want my neighbors to be able to be on the
Speaker 1: phone for the entire flight. WiFi fine, fine, as are
Speaker 1: not using Skype, which they probably can't because usually the
Speaker 1: WiFi or the plane is pretty awful. Yeah, anyway, that's
Speaker 1: where we are now, and who knows, maybe by the
Speaker 1: time this podcast go is live, the f a A
Speaker 1: will have lifted some of those restrictions, and Lauren, you
Speaker 1: might even be allowed to read your book while the
Speaker 1: plane is taxiing to take off. That's ridiculous. I look
Speaker 1: forward to this ridiculous feature. I also look forward to
Speaker 1: it because I just recently put in my registration information
Speaker 1: for ce S T fourteen, so I've got definitely got
Speaker 1: a flight coming up in my future. Yeah all right,
Speaker 1: So guys, that wraps up this discussion about the electronics
Speaker 1: in the f a A, and we'll see again how
Speaker 1: this plays out. Why don't you guys right in tell
Speaker 1: us what you think. Let's know, if you know, are
Speaker 1: you one of those people who you just quietly keep
Speaker 1: all your electronics running on full blast. Maybe you're like
Speaker 1: me and one day discovered in midflight that you had
Speaker 1: forgotten to turn off your cell phone when it suddenly
Speaker 1: started vibrating in your pants. That happened to me once.
Speaker 1: I was very embarrassed. Or maybe maybe you're a person
Speaker 1: who you always follow the rule and you find anyone
Speaker 1: who doesn't follow the rules to be the most irritating
Speaker 1: person on the planet ever at that particular moment, I
Speaker 1: also can be that guy. I'm the one who gives
Speaker 1: the stink eye to the person next to me who
Speaker 1: that job. Yeah, you know, we all have our we'll
Speaker 1: have our flaws, So right in and let us know
Speaker 1: what you think. Our email address is tech stuff at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter handle there's tech stuff hs W. And hey, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: what if I wanted to tumble someplace? You can. You
Speaker 1: can tumble on the fine floor of our podcast studio,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Um, or you can in a gymnastics way, or
Speaker 1: you can you can find You can find us on
Speaker 1: tumbler are our handle. There is also tech stuff hs
Speaker 1: W I hit my head All right, guys, Well that
Speaker 1: wraps this up. We'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: You've got a nice back over there for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does it have staff
Speaker 1: works dot com