‘What?….I’m on a plane!’

It’s official – by next month mobile phone calls could be allowed on planes flying in European airspace. Under new European Commission rules mobiles could be used once a plane has reached an altitude of 3,000m or more.

The decision to offer the services will now fall to individual airlines, but there are some regulatory hurdles to overcome before the technology is fully approved. The European Aviation Safety Agency needs to approve the hardware that would be installed in the aircraft to ensure it didn’t interfere with other flight systems.

Air France is believed to be ready to deploy the technology while Ryanair is expected to submit an application. (Airlines to avoid, perhaps?)

I do think that allowing mobile-phone calls is a good thing, especially for people on important business. But we’ve all been stuck on a bus or train with a woman who just won’t (or seemingly can’t) stop gabbing away. Let’s hope they put in some decent restrictions so as not to annoy the majority of passengers!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Media, Random waffle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “‘What?….I’m on a plane!’”
  1. Milly Newman Says:
    April 10th, 2008 at 10:24 am

    Maybe they can create a “silent” section where mobiles cant be used like they do on trains … and make screaming children sit outside this section too…

  2. Emily Rich Says:
    April 11th, 2008 at 11:08 am

    I like the idea but think it would be good to have a ‘talking section’ rather than a silent one so people can have some peace!

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