You’d think with the way people are almost married to their phones, barely looking up from their screens even when crossing the street, that they’d be thrilled to have the option of using their cell phones on a plane.
The U.S. Department of Transportation recently set out to get comments from the public on whether or not it should continue to ban cell phone calls in the air. Before the February 2017 deadline, more than 8,000 people had expressed their opinions, and the vast majority of them said, “thanks, but no thanks.”
Even the tiny fraction of people who were in favor of mobile phone use on planes said they should be strictly regulated and there should be “no-call periods” during safety demonstrations, takeoff, and landing.
Business travelers, who you’d think would be most grateful to be able to make calls while in the air, for the sake of extra productivity, were against cell phones in flight, too. One wrote, “Many business travelers take the fly time to get work done and I believe the cell phones in the air would be highly disruptive.”
Another business traveler was more blunt: “A thousand times NO!” they wrote. “As a person who must travel 80k miles annually for business, I can think of nothing worse than sitting next to some soccer mom who wants to yap for 4 hours straight until wheels down.”
Even the Global Business Travel Association, a trade group representing travel managers, chimed in. On February 6, they sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao urging a complete ban. Among other things, they noted that “according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the interior of a jet aircraft at cruising altitude is between 85 and 100 decibels,” and that “in order for a passenger to have a phone conversation over the roar of jet engines they would be required to practically shout, which would be severely disruptive to fellow passengers.”
The airline industry prefers that carriers be able to make their own decisions about whether to allow cell phone use, free from federal mandates. But even the carriers—or most of them, at least—say they’ve heard customers’ wishes and intend to continue banning cell phone use on their flights.
It’s interesting to note that while people want to be able to use their cell phones on other modes of mass transit, planes are different. As one commenter said to the Department of Transportation, “On a train or bus you can always move to another seat if you are annoyed.” On an airplane, not so much.
What do you think? Would you like to be able to use your cell phone on a flight, or would you prefer that cell phone use continues to be banned? Speaking personally, I’m not a big fan of having a seatmate conducting a loud (and probably way too personal for a public place) conversation while I’m trying to get some sleep or read a book.