Comments on: Data Warehouse Healthchecks and OWB training

By: Jon Mead

Jon Mead — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 08:28:05 +0000

JP – Agree with phone calls and possibly iPods, but I would like to sort out my (albeit offline) inbox during take-off and landing

Matt – that seems the most sensible answer I have heard, although it does in itself raise a few questions: should they also ban passengers from sleeping during this period, should they allow laptops with internet access so you can Google ‘What to do if the wings fall off…’

By: Matt Topper

Matt Topper — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:48:45 +0000

The real reason for them making you have your ipod and computer stored away during takeoff and landing is because those are the most dangerous times on a plane. If an engine fails during take off and you land in the water they don’t want to have to try and yell at you over your music to hear the instructions. Seconds do matter in those situations. If you are flying above 10,000 (the reason they say its 10 minutes before take off and landing) they let you use your devices because either you have a lot of time to put things away and prepare for an emergency landing (i.e. someone on board is having a baby or heart attack) or the wings blew off and you might as well enjoy your last minutes with your ipod before falling to Earth.

Thats at least the explanation one of my pilot friends gave me. It does make sense though.

By: Jean-Pierre Dijcks

Jean-Pierre Dijcks — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:21:31 +0000

Well, do you watch mythbusters? They tried the cell phone thing and tried to figure out what was going on. They did I think measure something… I think they concluded minimal issues, but they did call out the social aspect… imagine the guy who screams in his cell phone at 33000 feet in a tiny metal tube with no way to shut him up? Or the iPod that is so loud I can’t hear the movie? Ah well, enough about that, I guess we are still doing “better safe than sorry” and I guess I like it that way…

By: Brighton Werewolves « Pete-s random notes

Brighton Werewolves « Pete-s random notes — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 17:26:54 +0000

[...] of Brighton, Jon Mead writes a few notes on data warehouse healthchecks. I completely agree with his approach – it is the same [...]

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 07:40:21 +0000

Surely if iPods and laptops were really a problem (i.e. caused the plane to crash) they’d be banned from hand luggage, on the basis that statistically, someone at some time will leave theirs on, and cause the plane to crash? And based on that same probability, surely there’d have been a crash?

And again, surely it wouldn’t be too difficult a task to run some tests to establish whether there is in fact an issue? I would have thought the test would be straightforward:

1. Get in plane
2. Turn on ipod
3. Take off
4. Check if plane crashed.

Seriously, given how many logical holes there are in the airline’s argument, why do they still persist with this? That’s the real mystery.