How come airlines do not allow cell phones?

http://www.fluther.com/disc/658/do-cell-phones-really-interfere-with-airplane-instruments/

yea, its bad for the navigation systems.

I saw the 20/20 show and it said they can not find any reason for the ban . Their take was why take a chance . I agree and don’t use in hospital , also speak into your cell phone using your normal voice . We have all seen people that are talking real loud you just look stupid and it is not needed. A Normal voice level is all you need todays cell phones can pick up a pin drop , just spreading the word.

because you can pay $1.00 a minute using the verizon phone stationed at your seat.

After the FFA discovereed that it was not damaging to use cell phones on planes, they polled frequent flyer gold members [[or something to that effect]] on whether or not they would want cell phones to be allowed. The answer was overwhelmingly negative.

Imagine: if you already have background noise of children crying and mothers trying to comfort them, people competing for conversation with thier nieghbor next seat over, do you really need people trying to tlak on cell phones?

Well for me, here’s the thing.

Let’s just guesstimate that 1% of flyers forget to turn off their cell phones. I think that’s conservative. So, on any given flight more than 100 people, at least one phone is left on, fully active.

I fly a lot. On the occasions that I’ve discovered my phone still on (or in some circumstances, it woke itself up for appt alerts), it has zero signal at all at 30,000 feet. I couldn’t call anyone even if I wanted to.

And I cannot recall ever hearing someone’s phone ring at altitude.

I know my account is all just anecdotal… but I gotta think there’s a heckuva lot of misinformation and overzealous caution out there.

Oh yah… and newer 2.5G and 3G cellphones do indeed cause a tremendous amount of interference. Ever leave your blackberry next to your clock radio, or your wired phone, or anything else with a speaker?

Bzzzzt bzt bzt bzt bzt.

So I’m not discounting the interference… just the hype.