Tag Archives: FAA

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FCC has lost its collective mind

I have drawn this clear and unequivocal conclusion about the Federal Communications Commission.

Most of its members have lost their minds. They need to be committed, institutionalized, given treatment. They need an intervention of some kind.

This news is horrifying to the extreme.

The FCC has voted 3-2 to consider lifting its ban on in-flight cell phone use by airline passengers.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/12/travel/fcc-cell-phones-on-airplanes/

I’ll concede right now that humanity has made plenty of terrible decisions. Enslaving human beings perhaps is tops. Going to war is right up there.

However, I’m thinking that the day we allow passengers to yap to their hearts’ content at 30,000 feet above the planet’s surface while sitting in cramped seats next to other passengers just might rank with the worst decisions in all of human history.

What might happen next? Beats me. The FCC vote means only that the panel will consider it. The Federal Aviation Administration has to sign off on it as well, given that the FAA regulate air travel.

I’ve said before that a decision to allow this kind of activity aboard commercial aircraft is likely to spell the end of my domestic air travel forever. I also know that I hardly am alone in this belief.

Flight attendants and their union leadership are adamantly opposed to allowing it. I daresay that flight deck officers are opposed as well. I also believe a majority of air passengers oppose this notion.

So, how is it that the FCC even can consider this ridiculous notion?

Therein may lie the origin of the assertion I made at the top of this blog.

Three of the FCC’s five members have lost their minds.

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Say it ain’t so, airline companies

I awoke this morning, walked out of the bedroom and heard the chatter from the TV and what I heard was the most horrifying bit of travel news I’ve heard in years — and it had nothing to do with crappy weather.

What I heard was that airline companies might be considering lifting the ban on in-flight cell phone use by passengers.

That is the worst news I’ve ever heard as it relates to any form of travel.

The Federal Aviation Administration recently lifted the ban on in-flight use of other electronic devices: I-Pads, laptops, those sorts of gadgets.

But cell phones? Oh, my goodness.

The “Good Morning America” talking heads said this morning that it will take “up to a year” to decide whether to allow this idiocy on board jetliners.

The initial reaction from flight attendants is encouraging: They hate it … with a passion.

Passengers aren’t happy about it, either. One guy compared the annoyance of sitting next to someone blabbing on a cell phone to “sitting next to a crying baby.” I disagree. The cell phone user is much worse. The crying baby doesn’t know any better. The moron flapping his/her gums on a cell phone on a crowded airplane certainly does know better.

The FAA will have to consider this one very carefully if it’s halfway serious about lifting the ban. Any decision to allow this kind of activity aboard a jetliner is going to guarantee that I never — not ever — will fly commercially again.

I hope I’m not alone. Indeed, I suspect the threat of losing millions of other passengers just might be enough to persuade airline companies and federal regulators to scrap this idiotic idea.

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Please, please, FAA: no cellphones in flight

The Federal Aviation Administration has just removed restrictions on the use of electronic devices in flight.

Airplane passengers now can play Internet games, surf the Web, send emails … all that kind of stuff.

Has doomsday just inched a little closer?

I refer to the possibility of the FAA lifting restrictions on in-flight cellphone use. I hereby beg the flight regulators to never, ever let that occur.

I am ignorant as to how the technology works at 30,000-plus feet in the air. I guess these gadgets can pick up a signal from somewhere to operate. As for cellphones, I always have presumed they run on towers back on Earth. You get too far from a tower and you lose your connection.

There’s a fundamental issue involved with allowing cellphones aboard commercial airliners. It’s called “passenger safety.”

So help me — and I’m not alone in stating this — I don’t know what I would do if I had to sit for any length of time next to a passenger gabbing on a cellphone about nothing in particular.

I hope my fear about the FAA’s next step is unfounded. I hope the regulators understand the risk that passengers are putting on themselves if the FAA allows them to gab incessantly on cellphones while cruising tens of thousands of feet above Earth’s surface.

I’m OK with allowing emails and Internet surfing. But the FAA has just reached the outer limit of what I believe is acceptable aboard a commercial airplane.