Why I hate flying
I have travelled 19,566 miles by air so far in the last 11 months, according to my Kayak account. Besides the usual stress of queues as long as a silk-road caravan, orgy-like invasions of personal space and having to haul around a suitcase which I have packed so full that closing it takes more time than the act of packing itself - with more shirts than a Uniqlo store and an insufficient supply of underwear - the knockout blow is landed by a bun-sporting airhostess demanding nasally over the cabin tannoy that I be denied my only source of escapism.
You want me to surrender my phone and/or kindle and/or iPad and/or music? Seriously, what the hell?
A 60-a-day habit
I’m a data junkie, I know that much. Like the other 27% of the UK population who own a smartphone, disconnecting me is like taking away my cigarettes mid-puff whist I’m successfully sustaining a 60-a-day habit. At least smokers have the concession of fake cigarettes and nicotene patches.
Worst of all, the airlines don’t even explain why. I’m already herded up, bundled into a metal container surrounded by terrified strangers with all my possessions removed, subject to the sadistic whims of uniforms clones for an unknown amount of time, tortured aurally with incessant sales pitches and the low drone of the engines. Forcing me to cut off my last link to the outside world pushes flying from mere sensory deprivation torture to a verifiable crime against humanity. In fact, the CIA should seriously consider outsourcing the extraordinary rendition of terrorists to Ryanair.
The American dream
Over the pond, however, citizens are living the American dream, or at least my vision of it. On Virgin America flights all passengers are granted their unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness thanks to a generous helping of on-board wifi, and Australia’s Quantas has their in-flight entertainment system hooked into iPads which they hand out.
It’s my party…
I decided to try and get to the bottom of this by reading the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s report on personal devices in airplanes. There are two different categories: first are ‘intentional emitters’ like phones. They basically conclude that the only way to work out how much of a threat intentional emitters pose to airplane communications is to test them all, which would be next to impossible. Then are the ‘unintentional emitters’, like laptops and ipod touches or kindles, that are souped up with wifi. Similarly, there’s no way of knowing how much interference is coming from unintentional emitters because they’re emitting different waves all over the shop, but they’re probably not going to be broadcasting much and they’re very short-range, so let’s leave them be so long as they’re in ‘airplane mode’. As to switching off your music etc. at take off and landing, well these are deemed to be the most ‘sensitive’ parts of the flight, so they just want to make sure that you’re paying attention.
With so many different configurations and potential (but unproven) threats I guess that explains the blanket response; it’s the regulator’s party and they can cry if they want to. Having said that, those planes on which you can make calls and facebook-stalk your friends as you pass over their houses are specially equipped to protect systems but costs lots to equip, so that’s a different story.
The solution? 1) push for more wifi-friendly airplanes by co-ordinating a mass of strongly-worded letters to airlines 2) convince phone and device manufacturers to test all their devices on airplanes and create some sort of regulatory standard for doing it or 3) leave your phone on and hide your headphones when the air-hostess walks past, cus the chances are that it’s not going to make the slightest bit of difference.
