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Magnets Messing Up Laptops?
The Travel Critic · January 5, 1998

Look out, laptop users: traveling with a computer may be hazardous to your hard drive.

Two reports making the rounds on the Internet claim that airlines have begun using small magnets to hold business-class tray tables in place and that the magnets are zapping data on hard disk drives. One reader sent me a note about two passengers on a Sabena flight whose notebooks suffered a magnetic meltdown. Her message detailed the unfortunate experience:

"They set up their tray tables and proceeded to use their laptop computers. During the flight, both their PCs began to experience problems, and soon they were unable to use their PCs. Apparently the tray tables were magnetized, so that tray tables will not make noises while stored in the armrests. The magnetized trays corrupted the hard drives of both laptops."

Sabena isn't the only carrier with magnet troubles. Similar messages are making the rounds about American Airlines' tray tables, which are said to be just as dangerous as the Belgian carrier's pull-outs.

So what's happening here? Are business-class seats really hazardous to hard drives? Absolutely not, says Sabena, which recently issued an unusual statement about the magnets.

"We can give you a 100 percent guarantee that the initial message on the Web that started the rumor was a 'bad' joke!" the airline insists. "These aircraft do not have any magnetic devices installed on tray tables (or anywhere)! Therefore, it is impossible that such problems occurred."

American Airlines reacted in a similar manner.

"There's nothing to this,"says American spokesman John Hotard. "We've had no complaints of a laptop hard drive being erased on an American Airlines flights."

Is it possible that someone fabricated these portable problems to embarrass American and Sabena? Unlikely. I think passengers are experiencing some kind of data loss at 36,000 feet. I'm just not sure it's got anything to do with the tray tables.

Let's assume that something up there is erasing hard drives. The airlines say it wasn't a tray table. But what was it?

"There must be some kind of magnet," speculates Kevin Prince, vice president of operations at Fountain Valley, Calif.-based notebook accessory manufacturer Road Warrior International. "But where is it? How big is it? It would have to be quite a strong magnet to get through to the hard drive."

Prince says some of the new, slimmer laptops might be more vulnerable to a magnet, which could be why these problems are only surfacing now. On the IBM 560, for example, he says the hard drive is "right on the bottom" and exposed to any disturbances. "The thinner the computer, the greater the danger," he adds.

Terry Wiseman, publisher of the inflight entertainment newsletter Airfax, offers several explanations for the magnet troubles. Maybe it's not the tray tables, he says. It could be the pullout television monitors. Small magnets in the monitors are used to keep the little screens in place inside the armrests.

Similarly, in some business-class seats, small magnets inside the seats are used to hold tray tables or monitors in place. These, too, could be responsible for the magnetic mishaps.

Another possibility, Wiseman suggests, is that wires running through the floor or the overhead cabins could cause magnetic disturbances. Perhaps the cables are making the storage bins computer corrupters.

"Whatever is going on, I would think it is not very serious," says Wiseman. "Otherwise we would see a hell of a lot more cases of hard disk corruption."

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.