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The real reason you can't use the iPad on planes

- - Radio-frequency emissions from cell phones, laptops and other electronics can occur at the same frequencies used by aircraft communication, navigation and surveillance radio receivers. These emissions could cause fluctuations in navigation readouts, problems with other flight displays, and interference with air traffic communications. [Note: This goes against what Michael Altschul notes above, proving the issue may be debatable? - -

The most well known incident in the mobile communication industry came from testing early Bluetooth integration in a parked plane. They never determined how or why, but they were able to repeatedly shut off a fuel pump sensor when turning off a Bluetooth headset. The fuel pump it self never turned off.

Being a ground test it was no problem, but in flight it would have triggered alarms in the cockpit.

As an airline pilot I can attest to radio interference from cell phones. Often I hear static on the communications radios right after we land and everyone onboard starts turning their phones on. Cell phones often are transmitting at high power when they are initially finding towers. As for the other electronics that have no transmitters it boils down to the shear number of devices that would need to be tested on every different model of aircraft. Any device that uses electricity has the potential to cause electromagnetic interference wether it has a transmitter or not. Aviation will always be a place where we must take a very conservative stance with these issues.

Could increased interference upon landing be due to the plane being a lot closer to ground-based electronic equipment?

Wouldnt want to use up or slow down wifi bandwidth during takeoff and landing in-case needed if wifi becomes vulnerable

I've been told that cell phones are banned in part because of provider concerns about the ability of cell towers to determine which tower should "own" a call. At lower altitudes at least the phone is within approximately equal distance of multiple towers, so the logic goes.

Anyone have any solid information about this?

Ridiculous and demonstrates a lack of critical thinking. This problem is pretty easy to solve by a "contesting tower backoff" algorithm. The software component that registers both simultaneous captures from different towers can simply decide which is the select tower, and send a teardown command to the selected losing tower. Sigh.

There's no need to answer with snark or rudeness. mdwalls started his/her comment with a disclaimer: "Totally Unsubstantiated, But ..." He/She simply wanted to learn, to make sure, to confirm or disregard. And along you come, attempting to diminish him/her and make him/her feel dumb.

This type of answer only serves to crush curiosity, and in the end there will be no one to blame for "lack of critical thinking" but yourself. We will have shamed people out of asking and learning. I'd say the way you phrased you comment is "Ridiculous and demonstrates a lack of critical thinking".

EDIT: Wow, I just realized how old this article is...

I was once told that the reason you are asked to turn off all electrical devices serves a second purpose. The most likely point of a flight for an accident to occur is during take-off and/or landing. During an accident, there is the possibility of fuel being spread around and coming in contact with passengers. Jet fuel is highly flammable. The less electrical devices that are powered up, the less chance of an electrical device sparking a devastating fire during an incident.

Risk of fire; sounds like a good reason to power down, to me.

A 3.6 Vdc cell phone battery doesn't have enough energy to ignite Hydrogen, let alone aviation fuel. In the process industry it is called intrinsic safety. This is the same specious reasoning that continues to propagate the lie that a cell phone can blow up a gas station. It can't.

In the event of a crash that spills fuel, I'm assuming that metal scraping down the runway is going to cause more sparks and a hire risk of fire more than a few cell phones being powered on. While it's not immpossible, it's highly improbable that a phone/tablet would ignight the fuel because the vapor is what actually burns. If your device was submerged all the way, your odds are even lower.

The reason for banning cell phones on planes is line of sight. A few cell phones in the air could saturate a lot of towers all at the same time. It is the cell carriers that requested cell phones be banned for flights... as for take offs and landings... Pilots wear headsets and have multiple speakers in the cockpit. If you get some phones close to speakers they create a lot of irritating interference and could cause the pilot to miss information from the ATC at the most critical time (avoiding other planes during take offs and landings). There has also been a ton of research on electronic noise. All electronic medical equipment is very strictly regulated for electronic noise. No electronic device can emit too much noise and all of it has to be shielded as much as possible. I read a ton of papers on it when I worked for Hp/Agilent... Fascinating stuff... But that is the reason you have to turn off cell phones in hospitals. They don't want someone dying in the OR because some schmuck just had to feel overly important and take a call in the middle of a hospital. I'm ok with no cell phones on planes and no devices on for take offs and landings... We don't need them at those times and an ounce of prevention is well worth it.

Here in Atlanta when I get with about 30 feet of the VA Hospital my Net10 cell phone is rendered unusable. Evidently the techies are using some kind of device to block the frequency my cell phone uses. Other patients can be right next to me and their cell phone works. So whatever is going on is only for certain frequencies.

Jet fuel is basically kerosene, not particularly volatile and not easy to ignite. Gasoline is much more likely to cause problems with sparks, which are very unlikely to occur from a cell phone anyway. I have never seen a report of a fire caused by cell phone igniting a fire. Navigation is another consideration, but I would be willing to bet that there is not a well structured study that shows a problem with interference, or any historical evidence that shows a problem with an aircraft. My iPhone and iPad will interfere with my handheld GPS unit if kept within a foot of it, but have no effect at 16 inches. (Interestingly enough the GPS unit in the iPad works well and is more sensitive than the Garmin 76Cx.)

As far as cell phone use in hospitals, I work daily in an operating room surrounded by very sensitive monitoring equipment and frequently see cell phones n use. Medical staff members use our cell phones and pagers to communicate all the time without any discernible interference. If RF interference was a real problem electrocautery (actually RF cautery) and harmonic scalpels would be a serious problem, they aren't significant.

I wouldn't want to spend several hours in an aircraft next to some idiot discussing his business or social life at high volume on a phone. That being said, I applaud the ban on cell phone use on aircraft and would like to see it continued, but safety has no bearing on my feelings. YMMV, but I doubt it

I must totally agree with the ban on cell usage simply because of (some of) the people that feel the 'need' to use them. For some, unknown, reason a cell user tends to elevate their voice intensity and volume during the call (even though they may be otherwise soft spoken). If nothing else the ban provides for a more tollerable experience from an already stressed environment of air travel.

The title of this post is "the real reason you can't use the iPad on planes". Where in the text does it provide this reason? This seems like a rehash of tons of postings about electronics on planes, in general, and doesn't provide a "real reason".

You seem to be wrong on all accounts. First of all, you can't bring your liquids and nail gel because it actually happened. I was caught up in it the day they discovered someone with liquid explosives. You have to take your shoes off because of Richard Reid. True, these are all what you call "knee-jerk" reactions. But they did happen. I'm surprised they let us keep our underwear on after the underwear bomber. The only things that had saved a crowded airplane from being knocked out of the sky: incompetence and being caught. I don't know about you but I like being just a little bit safer. As for cell phones and electronics, do some web research. There have been instances.

You are one of those who like to put everyone else in danger just for YOUR convenience. Oh, and where do you get your data from as to whether or not electronics affect what goes on in the cockpit? Just because the pilot doesn't announce "we are about to crash because of electrical interference", doesn't mean the pilots are not dealiing with something in the cockpit. Fortunately, most pilots can still take the plane off the ground even with some of this. At altitude, you can play with your electronics as long as you are not transmitting. As for your statics, why not quote your sources?

When you go on board a plane next time, look at the FAA certificate posted above the door. You will likely see you are flying in a machine that was built 20 or 30 years ago. It's a bunch of analog electronics flying in a digital age. And at tens of millions of dollars a pop, the airlines aren't about to fix their fleet anytime soon.

Landing and Takeoff are the most dangerous flight regimes, so it makes sense to have them off then. But realize that you can't ever really turn an iPad or iPhone off -- it's still on even when it tells you it's off (otherwise it would never see you press the button to turn it back on). For devices like these with no real switch between the battery and the brain, there's no reason to have to turn them off, just put them in airplane mode and put them in Sleep for takeoff and landing.

Finally, the reason you know that non-cell-phones are a non-issue is once an airline starts collecting revenue to rent you WiFi, it's amazing how fast the interference issue goes away for them.

or rather I should say a lack of it is why I think this is the main reason that cell phones are banned.

Can you imagine 200+ people in the cabin talking away on their cell phones at once and very loudly at that?

No properly designed and vetted study or experiment has ever evidenced interference with aircraft systems from legal hand-carried electronics. No anecdotal reports of interference have had measurable consequences nor been replicated experimentally. Banning electronics is a chicken-little knee-jerk reaction akin to some other unwarranted "safety" concerns. Such limits arise from irrational requirements to guard against "suspected" perils that have not even been proven to exist. But it's difficult and often impossible to disprove that which isn't even real. Let's discard this non-problem and focus our efforts on real, serious needs.

During takeoff and landing the flight crew is also strapped in. This is when most planes have accidents - at 150+mph. They can't be looking for the passenger who pulled their iPad back out of storage at the last moment. If people don't turn electronics OFF, people will be inclined to sneak their devices back out of storage during takeoff and landing. In the event of an accident, such un-stowed devices become potential projectiles inside the cabin.

I too have forgotten to turn a device fully off, but I am also not inclined to take potential projectiles out of storage during takeoff or landing.

As for the person claiming a cell phone battery can't ignite kerosene? Pure ignorance. As an outdoorsman I always carry a bit of steel wool and a couple regular batteries. Shorting those batteries through the steel wool is a great way to light an emergency fire even if all you have is damp tinder. The Lithium Ion batteries in a cell phone have about the same VOLTAGE, but pack a LOT more POWER than regular batteries - who hasn't heard about the battery issues with the Boeing 787?

I am a person of the opinion that I don't like being told what to do without a reason. This is one of the biggest reasons I detest Pro-Life debates and am not very religious.

This information about planes does not bother me solely because of the fact we have to turn off our cellular devices. I can live without a cell phone, or an I-Pad, for a few hours. In fact it would give me time to catch up on some reading I've been meaning to do.

What bothers me is apparently there is no solid evidence that the flight is actually affected by the cell phone's interference. It has been stated multiple times in the comments that there is no real evidence, and the article came off to me more as a "The airlines just want to hate cell phones."

If it interferes with actual electronics, a study should easily be released and done about it. Someone can come out and say "Hey, yeah, we compared Plane A and Plane B for signals and communications, Plane B using cell phones interfered with the signal to the point it was dangerous."

Admittedly the test itself would be dangerous, but it doesn't seem like it would affect the planes all that much. That is just my opinion, however. I do not use airplanes very frequently, so I can not say I hate the idea.

... they would have been banned the possibility to carry them in passenger cabins. Imagine a group of suicide terrorists turning simultaneously on during take off their "massive destruction portable arms" (I mean, their cell phones) which they had no problem at all to pass through the security controls.

So, no, I dont think electronic equipment poses a real risk on flight systems, as if it was it would have been exploited already. In that case, it should be airline's responsibility to harden the aircraft against possible interferences, rather than impose ridiculous (and hard to control) restrictions.

As of someones conversation disturbing other passengers (in a future where people is allowed to use their phones on planes - by paying important fees, of course

Aircraft radio communication is analog AM radio. The system was developed in the '40s and hasn't changed much. Easy to interfere with.