[Sporktacular]

1) It's not. They ask people to switch off all transmitters during flights (and later to during takeoff and landing) because of RF emissions. 2) Because you can't turn trackers off, especially when they're in the hold.

Read the initial article that started all this, it even says that reason is because of transmissions.

[spoonalious]

Except they don’t because most have onboard wifi now. And most allow Bluetooth headphones, including Lufthansa:

Lufthansa: Bluetooth headphones are allowed during every part of the flight.

[gbin]

So clearly this is again an airline using a rule as a "proxy" for something else they want.

Like no chewing tobacco... Yeah it is gross but it is probably not a safety issue.

[mutt2016]

Flying is among the most dreadful activities I do. The whole thing is unsettling from the moment I pull up to the airport.

This is one of many absolutely ridiculous things the airline industry has enforced.

But.. I must fly places, so I just suffer like the rest.

[bombcar]

Note that voip calls are prohibited even though you can get internet access. This is because of annoying other customers, not because of safety.

[yellow_postit]

Wouldn’t it also be bandwidth consumption on a limited connection?

[fphhotchips]

Perhaps on the upload but download bandwidth can seemingly deal with a plane full of people streaming Netflix these days, so that's not an issue.

[anu7df]

Netflix on a plane? I have never seen that. Which onboard wifi allows that? Perhaps you are thinking of movies delivered via wifi, but the content is streamed from the plane itself.

[Sporktacular]

1) The wifi system is EMC certified and tested with the flight instrumentation. Dozens of different consumer devices are not.

2) Lufthansa "allows it during the entire flight without restriction – even during take-off and landing unless the crew instruct otherwise"(https://bluetoothtechworld.com/can-i-use-bluetooth-headphone...). In other words, unless you're told to turn it off in the event of some problem, which is something you can't do when it's in the luggage hold of the aircraft.

Again, the articles specifies this is about EMC.

[ajsnigrutin]

Their wifi system might be, but a 100 phones and tablets, some from reputable manufacturers, some from "10TB tablet apple samsung iphone" sellers from aliexpress, and the system still works.

Imagine planes falling down because a single passenger had a malfunctioning phone on it... the lawsuits against boeing/airbus would be astronomical.

[Sporktacular]

Not sure what about my comment you take to be an endorsement of opaque, seemingly unreasonable EMC rules. I don't make them, know if they work or particularly care for the purpose of this thread. The concerns stated, justified or otherwise, were about RF emissions and not battery fires.

[fphhotchips]

Oh yeah, I guarantee that's on all the emergency checklists. "Ask very nicely if all the passengers can turn off their bluetooth headsets".

Also, I'm pretty confident that Lufthansa's Airbus and Boeing planes are the same as everybody else's Airbus and Boeing planes. If there was an EMC issue that they were running into from Airtags, it would have been jumped on by the national aviation administrations so fast your head would spin. It would be major international news. It would not be an obscure rule with misleading and contradictory guidance coming from a single airline.

[zahllos]

I suspect the difference is more about the spectrum in use. Airtags can be found and interact via Ultra-Wideband (UWB), which essentially means low power broadcast across 3.1GHz up to 10GHz approx. This includes some spectrum used for GNSS.

One is probably fine but a hold full of them and people's iPhones emitting on UWB also?

By contrast Bluetooth, WiFi etc use the ISM radio bands, which can simply be avoided by any transmission the plane itself needs to do.

[Sporktacular]

UWB, which is pretty new, would be a really good explaination of why they single out these trackers specifically. Without some solid test results to clear them, it's understandable why airlines might be nervous.

Would just add that it's more what the aircraft needs to reliably receive (not transmit) that is susceptible to local sources of spurious RF.

[zahllos]

Yeah agree, receive is probably what I should have said :) I did try to see if there were any discussions of UWB before posting, but only found some PDFs from the FAA from 2015 or so in my casual search. I guess industry insiders might know more. It could well be that the low power was deemed not risky enough (you would have thought all airlines would have banned them if risky) and other posts suggest that in fact Lufthansa have not banned airtags at all... so who knows.

[8note]

Is that certification actually important?

It seems to me like a denylist would be more useful than an Allowlist at this point.

Almost no consumer electronics are dangerous to a plane

[Sporktacular]

Apparently, to them, yes.

[AlfeG]

All airline I've been travel, disable WiFi during takeoff and landing.

[reaperducer]

It's not. They ask people to switch off all transmitters during flights (and later to during takeoff and landing) because of RF emissions.

I think that's a little outdated.

I flew a few times a few months ago, and the passengers were repeatedly encouraged to hook up to the plane's wifi as soon as we boarded. No announcements were made about turning devices off. Not even during take-off or landing. I'm one of those people who pays attention to the announcements and reads the safety cards every time, so I was surprised.

I think the airlines think it's safer to have excitable people turned into gadget zombies during the flight to make the time pass faster and keep them from getting rowdy. The same function that the in-flight movie, drink, and meal used to serve before those were all value engineered away.

[mbreese]

> passengers were repeatedly encouraged to hook up to the plane's wifi as soon as we boarded

I think this is to make sure that you have it setup early so any tech support can be handled early and to make sure you can download the airline app to your phone if needed. The aircrew can enable/disable the wifi at will. Next time look to see if it is working at takeoff. I’m honestly not sure if it will be or not, but it used to be a switch in the cabin.

[Nextgrid]

> The aircrew can enable/disable the wifi at will.

Yes, but that does nothing when it comes to risk of radio emissions. Turning off the AP doesn't magically prevent client devices from doing whatever they want anyway. If there was a genuine risk of a client device interfering with the plane's equipment, turning off an AP wouldn't do anything about it, nor will asking the passengers to turn it off (some might not comply, forget or not even realize that their device has a Wi-Fi radio in it). You need either extreme control over every electronic device brought onboard (including X-ray scans, since implantable medical devices now have RF communication too), or enough shielding around the sensitive equipment to make RF no longer a risk - the latter has already been done for decades and RF is no longer (and I don't recall ever being actually) a threat to airplanes.

[reaperducer]

Next time look to see if it is working at takeoff.

Considering the number of people glued to their screens during takeoff, if it suddenly stopped working, I think the cabin-wide moaning and groaning would have been obvious.

[zwily]

They don’t ask you to turn off all radios during takeoff/landing anymore. Just cellular.

[OJFord]

And some large percentage doesn't bother and it's absolutely fine.

[Sporktacular]

Obviously. But it's not the point. Point was the concern - by their thinking - is not the battery in the AirTag but the transmitter.

I give up.