I've always been careful about putting my phone into "airplane mode" when flight attendants ask. However, a few years back, for reasons that I've yet to see any explanation for, flight attendants changed the script and started insisting that "flight mode" wasn't enough any more and you had to turn the phone all the way off. I've asked many times why this switch was made, and no one can say. At the point when that happened, I happened to have a smartphone that had no ability to turn off. I looked. There was no power button. There was nothing in the software that was a "turn off" function. The only way to turn it off was to pull out the battery. I did that on a few flights and then figured it was stupid. So I stopped. And nothing happened. With my current phone, I've tried to "turn it off" but even when it says it's turning off it's not really turning off (because when I switch the battery, it takes about 3 minutes to boot up -- but if I "turn it off" and then turn it back on, it's ready to go within a second). Today, I still always put it into flight mode, but that's it. I turn off the screen and put the phone away, but I don't "turn it off" because it's pretty clear the phone doesn't actually turn off. And the requirement is silly. Similarly, my tablet stays on in my bag and my laptop is generally in "sleep" mode, but not off.

And I'm not alone. It seems that lots of people leave their devices on when they fly.

In a study released on Thursday by two industry groups, the Airline Passenger Experience Association and the Consumer Electronics Association, as many as 30 percent of all passengers said they had accidentally left a device on during takeoff or landing. About 67 percent said they had never done this, always ensuring that their electronics were turned off. Four percent were unsure.

In another segment of the study, passengers were asked if they turn their devices to “off” when instructed to do so by the pilot. Although 59 percent of passengers said they do fully turn their electronics off, 21 percent said they often simply switch to “airplane mode,” which disables the main radios of a gadget. Five percent sometimes adhere to the rule. And others were either unsure or do not carry electronic devices on a plane.

People give all sorts of reasons for why the devices should be turned off, but none of them make much sense. There is the interference question, but given how many of these devices stay on, there would be at least some real evidence of interference by now if that were really a big concern. There is the "gotta pay attention to the flight attendants" argument, but then they wouldn't let you sleep or read a book during takeoff. There's the "flying device is dangerous if something goes wrong" argument, but that applies equally to books. So, what is the reasoning? There's either some reason that no one's explaining... or just a ridiculous overabundance of caution where it's clearly not necessary.

Of course, as I was finishing up this post, someone passed along a Bloomberg video that claims that phones do interfere with flight GPS. If you look at at the text that goes with the video, they cite a story of a flight that went off course until flight attendants convinced someone to turn off an iPhone. However, nowhere in the video do they even mention that story or give any data or support for that claim. The video claims are also suspect. They name a single study from nearly a decade ago talking about a single phone, which is no longer on the market, that caused some interference. The other "studies" they look at include a very small number of claims from pilots who claim problems and that they "suspect" interference from phones, but those are never confirmed. They found 75 such claims over six years, but without any evidence to back them up.

Again, given how often people leave their devices on, you would expect a lot more verifiable evidence beyond a few pilots "suspecting" that phones were the problem, when a variety of other variables might have been a part of it.

This one is from a few weeks back, but it's worth catching up on. In an age when pretty much everyone has a camera in their pocket via their telephone, it's fairly crazy to try to enforce "no photography" rules -- especially in places where they don't make any sense. And, yet, for reasons that are not at all clear, United Airlines apparently has the following "no photography" rule for passengers on their airplanes: But, of course, who would actually pay attention to something like that? Tons of people take photographs on airplanes. I've done it plenty of times. Yet, on one United flight a few weeks ago, apparently a flight attendant was being extra vigilant and running around the airplane demanding everyone stop taking photographs, even falsely claiming that it violated FAA regulations (it doesn't). One of admonished passengers was a travel writer and a frequent United Airlines flyer, Matthew Klint, who blogs regularly (and positively) about the airline. He took the following photo: The reason was that this was the first time he'd been on a plane with this configuration, and he intended to blog about it, as he's done many times in the past. The flight attendant ordered him to stop, and he did so immediately. But then he decided to just let the flight attendant know why he had taken the picture, and that led to a ridiculous chain of events ending with him getting tossed off the flight.

Naturally, the FA's warning bothered me and I felt the need to explain myself. I signaled for her to come back and asked her to hang my coat. I then said this verbatim—

"I want you to understand why I was taking pictures. I hope you didn't think I was a terrorist. Here is my business card [offering her one]. I write about United Airlines on an almost-daily basis and the folks at United in Chicago are even aware of my blog."

She took my jacket but refused to take my business card saying, "No, that's okay," then saying, "I did not know that" after I explained my reason for taking pictures. I again emphasize, I took no more pictures.

Just a few minutes later, he was told that the captain was ordering him off the plane. Klint eventually was able to speak to the captain who insisted that he had disobeyed the flight attendant, when he makes it clear he had not. It became a he-said/she-said debate and the airline, of course, won.

After the story started to get some attention, United reached out to Klint and claimed they were launching an "extensive internal investigation."

Klint is, quite reasonably, pissed off about the flight attendant lying about his actions. And he feels United needs to earn back his trust (and he notes they have not offered any sort of apology). However, it seems the bigger issue is the whole "no photography" rule. It's likely this was a rule that's supposed to protect the "privacy" of fellow passengers, but it's clearly one that was being misapplied by this flight attendant, who apparently stopped quite a few people from taking such pictures.

Yet, in an age where everyone has a cameraphone, the idea of stopping photographs in a settling like that isn't just silly, it's counterproductive and can be used (as in this case) to escalate a perfectly benign situation into a complete mess.

The term "open source" was coined back in February 1998, and initially it applied only to software. But as the power of open, collaborative development became apparent, other spheres have adopted the "open" tag along with the underlying approach. Here's the latest example -- open source planes:

MakerPlane plans to do for the aviation industry what Firefox and Linux did for computers. By adopting open source design and digital manufacturing, MakerPlane's founder John Nicol hopes to overcome the frustration and disappointment that most kit plane builders encounter. Over 60 percent of all kitplanes started end up collecting dust and those that are finished must overcome the challenges of complicated plans, the need for special tools and thousands of hours of labor with little or no manufacturer support.

The idea is a good one: to use Computer Numerically-Controlled (CNC) machining tools and 3D printers to fabricate many of the parts more quickly and cheaply than with conventional methods. To aid that, all the electronic files needed will be supplied. But this does raise some questions.

For example, quality control becomes an issue when parts can be made by anyone with the right equipment. What guarantee is there that they meet the needs of a full-sized plane? Even more problematic is the open nature of the project: if people can modify the design files before producing them, what implications does this have for the airworthiness of the final result? In particular, who is responsible if something goes wrong, and someone is injured?

It's great to see open source methods being applied to ever-broader fields, but we also need to make sure that there are no high-profile disasters -- like open-source planes falling out of the sky -- that could set back the wider application of the idea for years.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

If there's a way to make a weapon more mobile, the military has probably tried it. Bat bombs were created during World War II, but after spending a couple million dollars on development, the project was cancelled. Here are just a few more modern examples of flying weapons that are currently under development.

• Mav6 is building deadly blimps -- attaching guided missile systems to a huge, optionally-manned airship. This blimp can hover for a week a time, and it's surveillance capabilities could be coming back to the homeland... [url]
• The Airborne Laser was a proof-of-concept weapon that could take out missiles (in flight!) by shooting a laser from a modified Boeing 747. It's not really a practical way to shoot down missiles, but the idea seems to pop up about as often as putting lasers on sharks. [url]
• The US Navy is planning to convert some of its unmanned Fire Scout helicopters into autonomous pirate hunters. These ship-launched helicopters would be able to keep an eye out for small boats and possibly deter Somali pirates on the open seas. [url]
• To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

By now, you've probably heard the news that the FAA is reconsidering its policies on using electronic devices on airplanes. In truth this is primarily a technical issue, coupled with an administrative question of who will pay to actually test devices, but that hasn't stopped some people from expressing their support or opposition on a variety grounds. Peter Bright at Ars Technica is one of those people, offering a defense of the existing gadget ban that I honestly thought had to be a joke—but the punchline never came. The crux of Bright's vague argument is two-fold: that there is still a valid safety concern even if the devices cause no interference, and that we should support the ban for "spiritual" reasons.

There is still a small safety argument that resonates. ... If something goes wrong—which is admittedly rare, but not unheard of—it is probably to the advantage of all involved that they're paying at least some attention to what is going on around them. As safety measures go, they don't get much cheaper or more inoffensive.

But the more important reason to preserve the current rules is a spiritual one. There is something to be said for not being transfixed by an electronic gizmo. These devices have encroached on almost every aspect of modern life. Even in places that should be sacrosanct—at the cinema or theater, for example—sporadic buzzing, bleeping, and illumination courtesy of pocket-sized gizmos is abundant. I freely admit, I'm no angel here. Many's the time that I've interrupted a romantic meal at Buffalo Wild Wings to investigate a surprising Buzztime answer.

Those brief stints in which we must turn off our machines—the few minutes between push back from the gate and the extinguishing of the seatbelt sign, and the corresponding blackout at landing time—are something almost unique in modern life. Those rare moments in which our entertainment must come from within, not without. This is a perfect time to reflect on the journey ahead or the trip just taken. An all-too infrequent opportunity to quietly contemplate the world we live in and our place in the universe. A brief calm juncture in our otherwise hectic lives.

I'm not sure I'm convinced that the 0.5 seconds it takes to drop a Kindle and start screaming is going to cost anyone their life in a plane crash, but at least Bright admits that's the "small" argument. Unfortunately the only thing that's "big" about his other argument is the ego it must have taken to make it. I too think there's "something to be said" for switching off your gadgets once in awhile, but I'm not about to tell anyone it's necessary for their spiritual health, and I fear declaring cinemas to be "sacrosanct" is a bit much.

But even if you subscribe to this school of thought in full—and are the type of person who isn't satisfied with turning off your own gadgets, instead needing to tell other people to turn theirs off too—what does any of this have to do with airplanes? Every time a new technological tool is adopted into a new part of the average person's routine, someone is out there complaining that it "encroaches" on our lives, and those people have yet to accomplish anything except making themselves look increasingly foolish as time goes on. Many of us still know at least one holdout who bizarrely refuses to even own a cellphone (but will gladly borrow them from others when the need arises), and regardless of whatever "spiritual" benefits they think they are reaping, it generally hasn't delivered them to nirvana. Just because airplanes happen, randomly, to be one of the places that people are forced to tear themselves away from their gadgets, it doesn't make them temples of the Luddite religion. Philosophical questions didn't enter into the inception of the FAA's ban, and they shouldn't enter into the debate about its future.

Everyone knows what an airplane looks like, but maybe some types of aircraft won't be so recognizable in a few decades. Plenty of folks are working on flying contraptions with some unique capabilities. Here are a few more competitors to the usual "2 wings and a tail" design.

• A winged helicopter powered by an electric motor demonstrated its flying prowess at the Paris Air Show, recently. Watch out, Bin Laden wannabe's... [url]
• The D-Dalus aircraft propels itself in just about any direction using its four turbines with angle-adjusting blades. This thing doesn't look anything like a helicopter, but it can hover and take off vertically -- as well as "stick" its landings onto moving platforms. [url]
• Airbus has a transparent plane concept that it thinks could be the future of air travel. But not everyone wants to fly like Wonder Woman... [url]
• To discover more cool sites about aviation, check out what's currently flying around StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

johnjac points us to the news that the FAA's record keeping is so bad that it is "missing key information" on who owns 119,000 out of 357,000 registered private and commercial airplanes. Apparently, the FAA is so bad at record keeping that its solution is to phase out every plane's registration and demand that everyone apply for a new registration to get its database back on track. Apparently, the old system was that you just had to register once, and then you were responsible for letting the FAA know if info changed, but not everyone does that. So, basically, the FAA is rather clueless about approximately 1/3 of what's in the sky.

As someone who flies all too frequently, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit spooked by a report that the Spanair flight 5022 crash from two years ago may have been caused -- at least in part -- by malware on a computer that failed to detect three technical problems. Apparently, the computer which monitored those things got some sort of trojan horse, and may have failed to set off the necessary alarms because of this. As for how the computer got infected... it sounds like investigators still are not sure, but someone sticking in an infected USB stick or some other remote network connection seem like the most likely culprit. Of course, the reports seem woefully lacking in details. It's unclear how a trojan would block some software from alerting the crew that there was a problem with the aircraft. Honestly, the report seems to raise a lot more questions than it answers, and if it's actually true, it makes me wonder why we're relying on software that can be disabled via some random malware to watch for life-and-death safety issues on airplanes...

Over the last year or so, a number of airlines have announced that they (finally! really!) will be installing internet access on airplanes for customers to use. Some have announce very aggressive rollouts, but Joe Brancatelli over at Portfolio has noticed that the rollouts all seem way behind schedule -- and quotes an exec at American Airlines (one of the airlines who promised an aggressive rollout) saying that there's clearly something wrong with the technology. Brancatelli tries to get Airgo, one of the main providers of WiFi-in-the-sky service to comment on the delays and: "Aircell isn't talking and refused repeated requests for an interview. Instead, its public-relations agency referred me back to its press releases, most of which said Aircell would be operating by now." He also notes that, despite public claims from various airlines that they'll aggressively wire up a bunch of airlines, those same airlines either haven't submitted an application to the FAA to wire up certain aircraft, or only just submitted them. In other words, despite public posturing, your WiFi connection in the sky may take a bit longer to arrive.

Prior to 9/11, there was a lot of effort being put into plans for internet access from airplanes. However, the resulting turmoil in the airline industry put all of those plans on hold. In the end, that may have been a good thing, as the early technology was both expensive and clunky, and only a few generations later are we starting to see technology that is both affordable to install and use showing up. In the last few months, we've seen more and more stories about WiFi in the sky, with the latest one being that Continental is about to start offering live TV and WiFi, similar to a few other airlines. Having just flown on Continental on an excruciatingly long trip to Europe and back, I'd say that having internet access and live TV would have made the flights much more enjoyable.

What's really interesting here, though, is that Continental is turning to competitor JetBlue to provide the service. We were among those surprised when JetBlue bought some available spectrum for air-to-ground internet access. Like many, we had suspected that it would go to a service provider that would provide a generic service to any airline that wanted it. But, with JetBlue winning the bid, it opened up questions about whether the company would hoard the opportunity as a differentiator for its own flights. Apparently not. If JetBlue can succeed in outfitting other airlines, it could represent a useful side-business for the company -- even if it diminishes some of JetBlue's own competitive advantage. Of course, given that a new study has suggested that WiFi-in-the-sky really isn't a huge selling point, perhaps this makes sense. Basically, people are saying that it's a nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have. In other words, it's unlikely to bring that much new business directly to JetBlue, but if JetBlue can make it available on lots of other airlines, people would be happy using it.