John PotterChannel 2 News
Most of us who fly have seen someone on a plane using a cell phone, after the flight crew tells them to shut it off.
But is it really dangerous to leave them on during takeoff and landing?
"It's kind of frustrating because I'm usually, like, in the middle of an e-mail, or a game of Solitaire, or something," said Drew Keeth, an airline passenger.
When Alec Baldwin got thrown off a flight last month for refusing to turn off his phone, he became an icon for all those who think the rule is outdated. Every once in a while, though, something quite unexpected can happen on an airplane.
"It seems like the documented problems are fairly rare," said Captain Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who successfully made an emergency landing with U.S. Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in New York and saved the lives of everyone on board after birds struck and disabled the engines. He is now an aviation and safety consultant.
An Airbus A320 was on approach for landing in Detroit when the pilot reported "All communications on air traffic control frequencies were blocked" by a "passenger cell phone searching for service." When the phone was turned off, the problem stopped. A half dozen similar incidents have been listed since 2004.
"Some of the ones that concern me, and they're rare, are where there are navigational radios that are affected when you're trying to land in low visibility close to the ground," Captain Sullenberger said.
On the ground, a phone signal usually reaches just one or two cell towers, but from the air, one phone can blanket hundreds of towers potentially disrupting the entire system.
"Each time we fly and people leave devices on," Captain Sullenberger said. "They're conducting an unauthorized scientific experiment to see if this time, it makes any difference, if it affects anything electronically on the airplane."
So, according to the experts, the next time you fly, if you leave something turned on, the plane probably won't crash, but then again, you certainly don't want to be on the first one that does.
