Seth Yates

ComputerWorld has a great article entitled “Why cell phones are still grounded”.

The author recounts why the parties supporting the ban want it continued:

1. Why airlines want the ban
   • Crowd control: Mobile calls might promote rude behaviour and conflict between passengers, which flight attendants would have to deal with. The airlines also benefit in general from passengers remaining ignorant about what’s happening on the ground during flights, including personal problems, terrorist attacks, plane crashes and other information that might upset passengers.
   • Avoiding costs: If real testing were done, and the nature of the problem fully understood, it would become obvious that aeroplanes could be designed or retrofitted with shielding and communications systems that would enable safe calling through all phases of flight.
   • Increased revenue streams: The airlines know that some kind of plane-to-ground communication is coming, and they want to profit from it. Simply allowing passengers to use their own mobiles in flight would leave the airlines out of the profit-taking.
2. Why carriers want the ban
   • Avoiding costs: Because of the way that mobile phones and cell towers are designed, phones on an aeroplane could access two or more towers that use the same channels, which confuses the carriers’ computer systems. This situation might result in interrupted calls, reduced system capacity and other problems. Of course, this could be fixed in any number of ways, including an overhaul of the software used to manage calls between towers, but the fix would cost money. The ban is cheaper.
3. Why the (U.S.) government wants the ban
   • Avoiding costs: If it’s determined that some devices do cause problems, all gadgets would have to do extra certification testing, which the government doesn’t want to spend the money to do. The ban is cheaper.
   • Avoiding risks: Nobody wants to sign off a change in the rules because if a mobile does cause either an aeroplane crash or a cell tower computer system crash, they don’t want to be blamed. Keeping the ban is the safe decision for the politically ambitious.

He then provides the following reasons for wanting the ban lifted:

1. Either phones and other gadgets can crash aeroplanes or they can’t. If they can, then we’ve got a serious problem on our hands, and aeroplanes need to be upgraded to protect the public safety.
2. If gadgets can’t crash planes, then the ban is costing billions of hours per year of lost productivity by business people who want to work in flight.
3. Clearly, using cell phones is a public benefit, not to mention a business benefit. Shouldn’t the airlines and the regulatory agencies figure out how to make that happen?

Its an interesting analysis on a topic that (momentarily) irks me every time I board a plane. However, I’m not sure I agree with the basis of his reasoning for why the ban should be lifted.

1. Either phones and other gadgets can crash aeroplanes or they can’t. Okay, fair question and we should find out the answers to this question for reasons mentioned in the article.
2. If gadgets can’t crash planes, then the ban is costing billions of hours per year of lost productivity by business people who want to work in flight. I’m not sure how he’s calculating this. Assume for a minute that 30% of the 1.37 billion domestic passengers per year (globally) are business travellers. Note that due to the geography of my local region (Australia/New Zealand), I’m making an assumption here that international travel would mostly be over water and therefore out of mobile coverage anyway, so therefore irrelevant. However, this assumption wouldn’t hold true in, for example, Europe and most of Asia. Anyway, this equals 411 million domestic business travellers per year. Further assume that 25% of these travellers would use their mobile phone for an average of 30 minutes during the flight to conduct productive business. This represents 51 million productive hours per year. Assuming an average annual salary of US$65,000, that would be US$1.6 billion of productivity. Vary the assumptions and you’ll obviously get different results but that should give an order of magnitude of the issue.On the face of it, that’s a lot of lost productivity. However, if you think about it, the people who would likely be engaging in this behaviour would no doubt be finding other productive ways to fill their travel time, so its not a real loss in productivity.
3. Clearly, using cell phones is a public benefit, not to mention a business benefit. Shouldn’t the airlines and the regulatory agencies figure out how to make that happen? Surely having a safe flight is also of public benefit. I’ve been witness to some truly anti-social behaviour on flights in the US and can understand the airline’s desire to reduce rude behaviour and conflict amongst the passengers.

Turn the arguments around and ask what is in it for the other parties to lift the ban?

1. Why would the airlines want to lift the ban? They would possibly increase costs, risk reducing passenger safety and remove the “captive audience” factor for new revenue streams. They would need to increase the price of tickets to cover the increased costs, opportunity costs of foregoing the new revenue streams and increased costs for training and insurance to protect against anti-social behaviour caused by mobile phone usage. It unlikely this would be worthwhile.
2. Why would carriers want to lift the ban? They would incur costs with little additional benefit. Would the increase in usage enable them to recoup their investment in infrastructure to support this? Unlikely.
3. Why would the government want to lift the ban? They would possibly increase costs to certify devices and open themselves up to lawsuits if any accident happened and could be traced to usage of mobile phones. Sure, their citizens and businesses would benefit in convenience, but is that sufficient to motivate a risk-averse regulatory chairman? Doubtful.
4. Why would travellers want to lift the ban? They would benefit from the convenience and some productivity gains. But, would this justify the increased call charges from the carriers to cover the infrastructure upgrades, the increased plane fares from the carriers and the increased taxes/reduced services from the government?

When weighing up the costs and benefits, it doesn’t seem to be significantly beneficial to any party.

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