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Out of the Blue: Cell phone use sparks worst onboard battlesBy ELLIOTT HESTER
© St. Petersburg Times, One of the difficult aspects of a flight attendant's job is handling passengers who refuse to follow our requests: "Please stow your carry-on, sir." "Sorry, but fingernail polish is flammable and should not be applied onboard." Having voiced such FAA mandates to those who were not willing to comply, I have had my share of onboard confrontations. But the war of words seems at its worst when the subject turns to cell phones. Manufacturer Boeing seems less concerned with microwave transmissions from cell phones -- they do not operate on the same frequencies used in cockpits -- than with the electrical charge emanating from the phones' batteries. The electrical charge in most handsets exceeds Boeing's standards and can, in theory, cause interference to communications and navigation equipment. On the ground, the decision to allow mobile calls is left to the discretion of individual airlines. But the Federal Communication Commission (the government agency that regulates telephone usage), not the FAA, imposed an in-flight ban on cell phones in 1991. (However, a study commissioned by the FAA in 1996 failed to find a single instance in which equipment was affected by a wireless phone.) Though many airplanes are equipped with public "air-phones," passengers flinch at the fee, typically $6 per minute. Airlines get a cut of air-phone profits, which casts suspicion on why airlines want cell phones turned off in the air. Despite government regulation, chatting above the clouds on a cell phone has proved irresistible for some. On one flight, after the lavatory line grew to an unreasonable length, I knocked on the door. A teenager emerged and admitted she had been in there for half an hour, talking to her boyfriend on a cell phone. Such violators face possible fines. But when traveling on foreign airlines, using a cell phone can have more serious consequences. In 1999, a man refused to switch off his mobile phone on a British Airways flight. The captain arrived and told the man to hand over his phone. He refused. The 28-year-old was arrested upon landing and later was sentenced to one year in prison. And last February, a passenger on a Saudi Arabia Airlines flight ignored orders from the cabin crew to turn off his cell phone before takeoff. The man forced a 30-minute delay -- before being taken from the plane by airport security. Later, a Saudi court sentenced him to 70 lashes. On one of my own recent flights, I approached a man as our New York-Miami plane taxied toward the runway. Sitting in the first row of coach, he spoke loudly enough so that passengers rows away could hear details of his cellular conversation. Because the plane had left the gate, he was violating airline policy against cell phone use. "Sir, will you please turn off your phone?" I asked. He nodded his head in a way that suggested he would hang up when he was good and ready. I hovered above him, watched by other passengers. After I cleared my throat, the man looked up. "I'll be finished in a minute!" he said, aggravated by the intrusion. "Sir, you need to terminate your call now," I said. "It's airline policy." The man ignored me, prattling into his mobile. I was faced with two options: Demand that he turn off his cell phone, or inform the captain of the problem and possibly delay the flight. I stood there, amid a sea of upturned faces, as the plane moved closer to takeoff. Moments before we rolled onto the runway, I looked down at the man and related the harsh penalties imposed in those foreign-carrier episodes -- to no avail. Then, in a voice loud enough for the planeload passengers to hear, I told him that the aircraft would return to the gate and that he thus might cause his fellow passengers to miss their connections in Miami. The man abruptly put away his cell phone and remained incommunicado for the duration of the flight. - Elliott Hester flies for a major U.S. carrier. His book, "Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage, and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet," will be published by St. Martin's Press in November.
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From the Times Travel page
From the AP |
