An Apple iPhone may have been responsible for interfering with a regional airliner's navigation equipment while a flight was in ascent in 2011, sending the craft miles off-course. Fortunately for the flight, which landed safely, an attendant managed to convince the man who turned his phone on to turn it back off.
An unidentified co-pilot told NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System that when the phone was turned off, the interference went away.
The incident was one of 27 taking place over a two-year period between 2010 and 2012, according to a report by Bloomberg published on Wednesday. While the number of incidents are small, given the amount of flights taking place each day, they may explain why airlines are so hesitant to let passengers, like Alec Baldwin and his infamous kindle, to turn on electronic devices below 10,000 feet.
Electronic devices, particularly cell phones, can interfere with an aircraft's sensitive navigation equipment and overwhelm radio and GPS signals. To prevent any incidents from taking place, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires all electronics to be turned off during a flight's most vulnerable stages.
But the FAA has recently been considering relaxing the rules surrounding electronics on flights, including everything from iPhones and MP3 players to iPads and Amazon Kindles. That has some airlines, but not all, concerned after logging interference issues over the decades.
Freeing up the skies for personal electronics use is a popular idea for many customers, including politicians. U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has been outspoken about loosening the rules around non-cellular electronics in flight, saying, through a spokesperson, that requiring devices to be placed on airplane mode ought to be sufficient enough for airlines. While most devices today include airplane modes - modes which turn off all radio transmissions in a device - the term can carry different connotations among different devices.
Some may cry out "hypocrisy!" before pointing towards the use of iPads by airline pilots on Delta. But the iPads used by these pilots don't connect to cellular networks, as some models do. Airlines opposed to letting customers use iPads during flight say customer devices haven't been tested and may malfunction, causing flight interference.
In January of this year, the FAA appointed an advisory committee to, with representatives from both the airline and technology industries, to recommend whether or not the FAA should broaden the use of electronic devices in planes. The recommendations are expected in to be published in July.
