Turn off your phone?

Noel Ward thinks the ban on using cell phones in flight is pointless, so he sometimes doesn’t bother powering his handset down when he’s on a plane. “I’m not sure it matters,” says the Web publishing consultant from Amherst, N.H. “I generally lose a good signal somewhere around 10,000 feet, anyway.”

Ward isn’t the only traveler who ignores the flight attendants’ requests to turn off wireless devices in flight, dismissing their warnings that the signals may interfere with a commercial aircraft’s communication and navigational systems. Passengers have long doubted that a two-ounce phone could steer a 450-ton aircraft into a mountain. But the role of wireless phones on Sept. 11 – when people on the doomed flights communicated their final farewells via their wireless phones – made many of those doubters turn defiant.

To make matters worse, the airlines then began to remove their only alternative to an illegal cell phone call: the expensive in-flight phones. Citing weak demand, American Airlines cut off satellite phone service to 653 planes in March. Alaska Airlines and Southwest Airlines have pulled the seatback units out, too, and Northwest Airlines is considering a similar move. All of this is leaving frequent travelers wondering if, in an age of instant communication, there’s any way not to ignore the limits on using wireless devices.

In order to understand where this is going to end up, it helps to know how we got here. Frequent travelers never completely believed the airlines when they claimed cell phones were dangerous. Research and federal or private agencies, they pointed out, had never definitively proven a link between cell phone use in the air and interference with airplane electronics. And when The Wall Street Journal published a report in 1999 suggesting that carriers had banned cell phone use not because of safety, but to boost seatback phone revenues, frequent fliers were furious.

It wasn’t long before road warriors began to openly admit that they were disobeying their crew’s directives. On electronic bulletin boards and newsgroups, travelers swapped stories about which personal digital assistants could send and receive mail from cruising altitude, and they traded tips on how to elude eagle-eyed flight attendants who might force them to turn their devices off.

Some airline passengers thought that as long as they left their cell phones on without using them, they weren’t really breaking any rules. Just bending them.

In fact, there’s little difference between keeping a phone powered up and making a call. Digital phones send out what’s known as a registration signal when they’re turned on. That signal, which tells the cellular tower that your phone is available to receive calls, occupies the same frequency as it would if you were talking on it. The only difference is that the signal is slightly stronger when you’re talking. That’s why your phone’s battery wears down faster when you’re using it. (Analog phones use a different frequency for calls than registration.)

Interestingly, the electronic scofflaws enlisted an unlikely ally along the way. Some pilots began to quietly support the illicit cell phone calls, mainly because they saw little reason not to.

“Never, in 25 years of flying, have I ever encountered a loss of navigation signal, either due to cell phone usage, or other electronic anomaly,” a pilot for a major U.S. airline says. “To the best of my knowledge, neither have any other of my pilot friends. Back in the old days passengers were told to ‘turn them off’ because the carriers simply wanted to recoup the cost of installation and additional revenue that was generated from using the new airborne in-flight phones. Of course they couched the mandate in safety of flight issues, but there was no scientific foundation for the request.”

Chances are, air travelers are going to continue to insist on staying connected in flight, but isn’t there a way for everyone to get along? Sure, but it may take a while for technology to patch things up between the passengers who leave their phones on and those who stay unplugged. Some of the more innovative airlines, such as Virgin Atlantic and JetBlue, are developing high-speed data and wireless communication services that could let passengers stay connected without potentially putting the entire plane in peril. But these solutions are distant; until then, travelers seem headed for a confrontation with their crew – or with fellow passengers.

“Are we so indispensable that we can’t be out of touch for a few hours?” asks Annie Adams, a retiree from Colorado Springs, Colo., who adds that she’s “ticked off” that people even think of leaving their phone on. “Folks, get over it! If you can’t be out of contact for the time of a plane flight, then you are too busy and have no business being on an airplane anyway.”

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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