Cell Phones on Planes

Season 4, Episode 6, Aired

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So, supposedly, if you fill a normal raft with helium, you can fly. Let's see if the guys can get their boat into the air get ready for the biggest Mythbusters' build ever. Meanwhile, Tory and Kari tackle a conspiracy theory familiar to many frequent fliers. Can your cell phone interfere with a plane's instruments?moreless
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Fan Episode Reviews (3)

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  • Interesting and entertaining, but one oversight in the conclusion.

    7.6
    "Good"
    By jbp1954, Aug 28, 2010
    The conclusion that cell phones may not interfere with navigation equipment and that the FAA is being necessarily cautious has one flaw (in addition to what the 2 previous reviewers wrote).

    The testing on the airplane was performed on a very high-end jet built in 2003.

    There are thousands of commercial airliners in use today that have been flying for 20 or more years. I'm amazed frequently when I step onto a plane and notice a service date from 20 years ago.

    Today, we're much better at shielding instrumentation from RF, but not as good as we need to be. The automotive world has gotten very good at it, but look at the rules when you visit a hospital - other industries have not kept up.

    To test the theory better, it would be interesting to try the same experiment on some of the older planes in the fleet.moreless

  • Entertaining - With a big oversight?

    7.0
    "Good"
    By shushing3, Aug 28, 2010
    I really enjoy the antics of the myth busters team. Very entertaining!

    Aircraft electronics designers know that Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) is a serious problem to be reckoned with, and is definitely considered when deciding how to shield and layout internal wiring and external antennas. The problem is that EMI is hugely affected by many factors, including individual variances in the construction process, the strength and frequency of the signals involved, and the geometry of any specific test case.

    I wonder if viewers realize that you can prove failure with one test case, but not safety, which is a consistent lack of failure in all cases. You'd need a very large set of test cases, all different configurations, and if you found interference in even one of them, you'd have to conclude it was unsafe, since you can't predict the combination of factors that might occur on any specific real-life occasion. Even more than I'd like to be able to use my cell phone on an airliner, I want to arrive safely, especially on a dark IFR night at a mountain airport. I don't want my pilots following an ILS needle that's off by a few degrees, into the side of a mountain, because somebody who watched the show thinks it's a "myth - busted" that cell phones can negatively affect the flight.

    One major oversight in this experiment was not emphasizing that even just carrying an active cell phone at 40,000 feet can have a huge impact on the cell phone system. Normally a phone is "seen" by just a few cell stations on the ground, because of the line-of-sight range limitation. So, at any given moment, whenever a phone is on, even if it's not actively in use, those few cell stations are negotiating with each other about signal strength, and which one will service the user's next call. When a phone is turned on at airline cruising altitudes, many, MANY cell stations can "see" that phone, and they all start negotiating about which one will handle any upcoming call the user might make. This significantly increases the network traffic between the cell stations, and has the potential to overwhelm the entire system, if more than a few users leave their phones on.

    I know some people already use their phones on airliners, thinking they got away with it, so it must be ok. I hope your show didn't encourage too many more independent thinking folks to go out there, and really mess things up.
    moreless

  • I watched the episode and I felt I had to write.

    8.0
    "Great"
    By pwyll1, Aug 28, 2010
    Modern aircraft use \\\"fly-by-wire\\\" technology. Fly-by-wire uses electronic impulses that travel from the controls to the control surfaces. Cell phones and other electronic devices may interfere with the electronic impulses from the cockpit to the control surfaces, causing a loss of control. The mythbusters may be wrong on both counts.
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