The case that I suspect worries them isn't the well-manufactured, brand-new device on a shiny new plane. It's the older, banged-to-hell, third-rate Chinese knockoff against the oldest avionics in service. The question they have to answer isn't, "Should it be fine?" but "Can we prove it will never cause a glitch at the worst possible moment on the most problematic flight of the 10,000,000 we have each year?"

I'm astounded at the arrogance of random people who are sure they know the answer to that based on zero data and a strong sense of entitlement.

[Edit for background:

The case against water is "Water is difficult to tell, by cursory visual inspection, from a binary explosive. We've never actually lost a plane to a binary explosive, but we know they were pretty serious about trying that, and we wargamed it out and it looks like one liter of binary explosive applied to the right part of the right airplane means we have a very bad day." ]

Its "distraction of pilot or minor technical disruption during a difficult landing at a moment that has become crucial because of other issues."

Al Qaeda can't afford to put terrorists with custom electronics on an appreciable fraction of our 10m flights a year hoping they get one of the 10 most vulnerable ones.

But those flights will have hundreds of electronic devices on them. Being 100% sure that there will be zero problems is tricky. And given that the tradeoff is, "people have to read a magazine for a few minutes" versus "fiery death for hundreds", I'm perfectly ok with them being conservative here.

I keep getting back to what was already said above: if there was any actual risk whatsoever, we wouldn't be allowed to carry them on in the first place.

I think we've seen that this is not a problem for the Powers that Be. It's not as if the TSA chairman ever has to fly coach.

and would probably be overkill

I'm certain that we've seen that this is not an obstacle for implementation by the government.

but the risk is still non-zero

(Shrug) Zero accidents out of tens of millions of flights in which you can be pretty sure that at least one passenger has left their phone on. Close enough to zero risk for me.

If you think anything that doesn't directly cause accidents aren't worth regulating, you don't truly appreciate why we have such good air safety.

Letting he pilots chit-chat when landing can't hurt either, right? Millions of successful flights before the sterile cockpit environment idea came about, would perhaps seem like close to zero risk for you, yet we are all safer now because of it.

By definition I take far more risk when flying a single-prop light aircraft, and I'm fine with that. What I don't expect is to be able to force that risk level on other people.

You can't run a civilization on the Precautionary Principle. You understand that, right? Most people understand that, but the TSA and (until now) FAA don't seem to.

And as mentioned elsewhere there had been reproducible incidents of interference reported, which was the initial reason for the ban.

While I have long maintained that the ban is most likely not necessary, I'd much rather have he FAA make that decision and wait a few years until they have done enough studies and collected enough data.

I agree that we can't run the entire civilization on a precautionary principle, but then again that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about 10-20 minutes of inconvenience during critical flight phases. And believe me I hate the beurocracy and often overreaching rules of the FAA (or EASA in my case), but again I appreciate that we would not have he current air safety record without it. In fact, the FAA is usually reactionary in that they usually only act when fatal accidents have happened. (Pilot and crew rest hour limits is one very recent example).

Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't the onus be on proving that there is no risk, not that there is?

It would have kept us confined to the caves, if not the trees.

Yes, clearly we should... um, do what?

What's your point, that you would be happier with a riskier aviation industry?

My point is that many of the things that annoy passengers don't have anything to do with quantifiable risk. Suggest reading some Feynman, specifically his essay on "Cargo cult science."

As I said, get a PPL

That wouldn't give me any special authority on the subject. These questions must be answered analytically, not with fearmongering from bureaucrats or anecdotes from pilots without RF engineering credentials.

I suggested getting a PPL to get rid of all those annoyances that commercial air transport impose on you to reduce their risk. There is even an experimental airplane category if you want to err on the risky side.

I agree that it has to be approached analytically, but since you can't prove a negative, in the end you have to make a risk assessment. I certainly don't agree with all of them, but there have been enough examples of fatal accidents when the FAA didn't do their job, that I'm happy that they are taking their time to, guess what, do the analytical work, before changing a regulation. As opposed to acting on a gut feeling about what would be safe.

Dude, if I said the sky was blue, you'd post a response to Hacker News insisting it was green.

I wonder how much power it takes to desense a GPS receiver, however.

Terrifyingly little, it turns out. Signals from the GPS constellation are about as 'bright' as a light bulb several thousand miles away, and the modulation format usable by civilian receivers is not exactly jam-resistant.

Thankfully there's no reason for a GPS antenna on an aircraft to look anywhere but straight up. It can be well-shielded against interference from within the cabin. Still, GPS interference is a real, reproducible and documented issue, unlike the cargo-cult science being discussed here.

If it was the case, this would be a complaint we hear from pilots every day. Think of how many people simply forget to turn off their cell phones...

I'd be willing to bet that most people don't bother to actually turn off devices / switch to airplane mode. On a flight last month I even watched a guy turn off the screen on his iPad when asked to shut it off, then as soon as the attendant walked away he turned it on again and continued to use it throughout take-off.

And although it is not a problem for a pilot in normal conditions, it could be a factor that complicates things for a pilot. If the visibility on a takeoff/landing is bad, there is traffic congestion, air traffic control is stretched to the limit you'd definitely don't want a faulty cell phone suddenly jamming an ILS approach system ;)

I'm sure it happens (the post a bit back about the guy's laptop that was broadcasting mic input due to wacky wiring is a great example), but I'm really dubious that it's significant enough to actually interfere with comms from a system designed to throw radio signals 200 miles.

Sometimes you hear interference from GSM phones because the TDMA time divisions are in the AF range, but that's really a function of the power envelope rather than the power of the transmitter. I don't even really count this because I've never seen a GSM phone interfere with a non-part-15 device. Radios have to reject nearby signals; noise well outside their frequency range is even easier to reject. (I've never heard anything like GSM interference while operating my HF radio, either, and I have a GSM phone.)

These are local nav systems, not FM stations that put kilowatts into the air.

Take an ILS (instrumental approach) frequency 108Mhz. Any piece of wire of around two feet (half dipole) can be a pretty effective antenna at that frequency. Say, headset cable + an output cascade of the amplifier self-excited at this frequency? Doesn't happen in real life, but still...

I am not sure how much effect this has, but it's something to keep in mind.