20 years ago, it wasn’t a problem. Now it irritates me when I’m on the train. It irritates me when I’m in a restaurant. It even irritates the hell out of me when I’m at the library. The curse of the mobile phone is everywhere. There are only two places I can think of off the top of my head that are relatively free from ringtones and loud bickering. The church and the airplane. These aren’t entirely safe, however. I remember being at a funeral in Ireland when I heard a buzzing sound next to me and the church bench started vibrating. The guy immediately ran outside into the rain to take the call. I have memories of flying into Belgrade airport when a fat, bald, sunburned man dressed in a shirt three sizes too small whipped out his phone and proceeded to make a call 2 minutes from touchdown.
To my horror, I’m reading more and more articles predicting that the use of mobile phones on planes will become standardised. Turkish Airlines, Etihad, Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa are just some of the airlines embracing mobile phone technology. Passengers flying from London to New York with Virgin Atlantic are already allowed to make calls on condition all devices are switched off before entering U.S. airspace – in flight mobile phone calls are still banned by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Ok let’s get something straight – I have an iPhone and it’s great. I grew up in Boston but I live in Europe now. This amazing piece of technology allows me to keep in touch with news events and family back home. Still, sometimes I need some peace and quiet. I met an old friend in Dublin recently and we were sitting in a nice cosy pizzeria catching up. Some guy in a suit at the next table answered his phone and blabbered away for 10 minutes in the loudest possible fashion. As I said, I love my iPhone and I love being connected. But not all the time. Maybe this will come as a shock to some people but sometimes I refuse to answer my iPhone. I need to escape.
As statistics about telecommunication will show you, the danger of that kind of technology and electronic devices working in combination with aviation avionics has been well documented. So, I have this recurring nightmare: I’m flying back to Boston and someone makes a phone call. It interferes with the aircraft’s electronics and we all plunge into the Atlantic 35,000 feet below. Far-fetched? Not quite. According to the Guardian, mobile phones contributed to 20 incidents of aircraft malfunction between 2000 and 2005. Electromagnetic radiation does cause problems for electronic equipment onboard aircraft.
So how are passengers suddenly making safe phone calls onboard aircraft today? New technological devices known as base stations have been installed on aircraft which control and manage mobile phone signals, ensuring they cause no interference. Thinking back to that fat, bald, sunburned man dressed in a shirt three sizes too small – we really should have wrestled him to the ground, he could have killed us all!
Nightmarish catastrophes aside, what about the social aspect of mobile phones in the sky? I know that when I’m sealed in that aluminium tube for 9 hours, I don’t want to be disturbed. I don’t even want to be disturbed on a short haul flight. According to Market Watch, the Federal Communication Commission were contacted by thousands of passengers when they considered lifting the American in air mobile phone ban. The passengers all cited disturbance and annoyance as the reason for their opposition.
So I can imagine this might be beneficial for business passengers. If you’re flying for 15 hours, then you’re missing out on a lot of email time. However, as this is relatively new and novel, it’s going to be costly. Perhaps too costly for everyone. In any case, mobile phones are on the way to an airline near you. One of our very last safe havens from this technology is going to disappear forever. Now I’m just waiting for the day when I go to the church and the priest strolls down off the altar with an iPad. Would that be disturbing? Not at all! It might even encourage me to go to Mass more often. If the church somehow permit phone calls and we lose our very last place of refuge, that’s going to be a sad day for me. I’ll have to visit the woods in Alaska for some peace and quiet far away from that ringing menace. Oh, and I’ll leave my own iPhone at home too.