Cockpit Confidential (26 page)

Aircraft electronics are designed and shielded with interference in mind. This
should
mitigate any ill effects, and to date there are no proven cases of a phone adversely affecting the outcome of a flight. But you never know. If the plane's shielding is old or faulty, for example, there's a greater potential for trouble.

Even if it is not actively engaged with a call, a cell phone's power-on mode dispatches bursts of potentially harmful energy. For this reason, they must be placed in the proverbial off position prior to taxiing, as requested during the never-tedious pre-takeoff safety briefing (
see briefing babble
). The policy is clearly stated but obviously unenforced, and we assume the risks are minimal or else airline personnel would collect or inspect phones visually rather than rely on the honor system. I'd venture to guess at least half of all phones, whether inadvertently or out of laziness, are left on during flight. That's about a million phones a day in the United States. If indeed this was a recipe for disaster, I think we'd have more evidence by now.

That said, cell phones may have had a role in at least two serious incidents. The key word here is “may,” as interference can be impossible to trace or prove. Some blame a phone for the unsolved crash of a Crossair regional plane in Switzerland in 2000, claiming that spurious transmissions confused the plane's autopilot. Interference was cited as a likely contributing factor in a fatal RJ crash in New Zealand in 2003. In another case, a regional jet was forced to make an emergency landing after a fire alarm was allegedly triggered by a ringing phone in the luggage compartment.

Those are extremes. What would interference normally look like? You imagine a hapless passenger hitting the SEND button and suddenly the plane flips over. In reality, it's liable to be subtle and transient. The electronic architecture of a modern jetliner is vast to say the least, and most irregularities aren't exactly heart-stoppers: a warning flag that flickers for a moment and then goes away; a course line that briefly goes askew. Or something unseen. I'm occasionally asked if I have ever personally witnessed cellular interference in a cockpit. Not to my knowledge, but I can't say for sure. Planes are large and complicated; minor, fleeting malfunctions of this or that component aren't uncommon, and their causes are often impossible to determine.

It's possible that airlines are using the mere possibility of technical complications as a means of avoiding the
social
implications of allowing cellular conversations on planes. The minute it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that phones are safe, a percentage of flyers will demand the right to use them, pitting one angry group of travelers against another, with carriers stuck in the middle. If indeed airlines are playing this game, count me among those sympathetic who hope the prohibition stays in place—not out of technical concerns, but for the sake of human decency and some bloody peace and quiet. The sensory bombardment inside airports is overwhelming enough. The airplane cabin is a last refuge of relative silence (so long as there isn't a baby wailing). Let's keep it that way.

The chimes you hear are one of two kinds. The first kind is basically just a phone call. The flight attendant stations and cockpit share an intercom system through which any station is able to call another. When a call is made, the recipient's phone will “ding.”

Chimes also are used by pilots as a signaling device for the cabin crew. On the plane I fly, we create this sound by cycling the seat-belt sign an appropriate number of times. Airlines have their own rules for how many chimes mean what and when they're given, but the basics are the same: ordinarily, those after takeoff indicate the plane has passed through 10,000 feet, at which point passengers can use approved electronic devices and flight attendants may contact the cockpit without fear of interrupting a critical phase of flight. During descent, it's equivalent to, “We'll be landing soon, so please get the cabin ready.”

None of the signals, by the way, has anything to do with landing clearance. Often, after the second round of descent dings, you'll hear a flight attendant announce, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have been cleared to land, so please put away…” I don't know when this habit got started, but in reality the flight attendants have no idea when the plane is cleared to land. They're using the term for convenience. Actual landing clearance, assigned by air traffic control, usually comes much later, sometimes only seconds prior to touchdown, and it is
not
something communicated between pilots and cabin crew.

For the record, it is not true that a runway must be vacant before a flight is cleared to land on it. Flights are cleared to land all the time with other arriving or departing planes still on the strip. It simply means that you may go ahead and land without further communications with the control tower. If the runway is not vacant in time, ATC will cancel the clearance and have you go around.

At United Airlines, one of the few purveyors of this oddly intriguing form of entertainment, this is called Channel 9 in honor of its position in your audio panel. It's either fascinating or tediously indecipherable, depending on your infatuation with flight. It is sometimes unavailable, at the crew's discretion, because of the unfriendly letters people send and the litigation they threaten when it's perceived the pilots have made some “mistake.” Also, passengers not familiar with the vernacular may misinterpret a transmission and assume nonexistent or exaggerated troubles. Let's say a controller asks, “United 537, um, do you think you can make it?” This is a common query pertaining to whether a plane can hit a specific altitude or navigational fix at a specific time or speed. Depending on the controller's intonation—or the pilot's reply, “No, we can't make it”—such innocuous exchanges might have a passenger bursting into tears and picturing his wife and children.

If you're tuned in, listen up for some of the more colorful airline call-signs. While private aircraft use their registration numbers for radio identification, commercial flights use a call sign and flight number. Usually that call sign is simply the airline's name. “Delta 202, descend and maintain eight thousand feet.” Many, though, have adopted idiosyncratic handles, Pan Am's “Clipper” being the most famous example. “Clipper 605, you are cleared for takeoff.” One you'll hear quite a bit is “Cactus.” Originally the call sign of America West, it was later taken up by US Airways after the merger of those two companies and remains in use. Aer Lingus uses the classic “Shamrock,” while at China Airlines it's “Dynasty.” A “Springbok” is an antelope and also the handle of South African Airways. British Airways' “Speedbird” refers to the nickname of an old corporate logo—a delta-winged bird of sorts—originally used by Imperial Airways, one of BA's predecessors, as far back as 1932. Others from the past are New York Air's “Apple,” Air Florida's “Palm,” and ValuJet's unfortunate choice of “Critter.”

In the late 1970s, riders on American Airlines's DC-10s were entertained by a live-action video feed from the cockpit during takeoff and landing, projected onto the movie screen. Nowadays various airlines show the view from a nose, tail, or belly-mounted camera. Passengers can switch between shots using their seat-back video controls. On Emirates you can choose between a forward view and one that points straight down, showing what the plane is passing over. (The latter resulted in a rather silly controversy in Britain when nude backyard sunbathers worried that overflying passengers were getting a free peepshow.) Some Airbus A340s have a tail-mounted camera showing an aft-facing view—a fun, if dizzying, perspective that lets you watch the runway falling away on takeoff.

In America, commercial flying is governed by a vast tome known as the Federal Aviation Regulations, or FARs—an enormous, frequently unintelligible volume that personifies aviation's boundless tendency to take the simplest ideas and present them in language as tangled and convoluted as possible. Of its crown jewels, none is a more glittering example than the safety briefing—twenty-five seconds of useful information hammered into six minutes of rigmarole so weighed down with extraneous language that the crew may as well be talking Urdu or speaking in tongues.

Whether prerecorded and shown over the entertainment system or presented live the old-fashioned way, the safety demo is a form of camp—a performance art adaptation of legal fine print overflowing with redundant airline-ese. “At this time we do ask that you please return your seat backs to their full and upright positions.” Why not “Please raise your seat backs?” Or, my favorite: “Federal law prohibits tampering with, disabling, or destroying any lavatory smoke detector.” Excuse me, but are those not the same bloody things? Doesn't “tampering with” pretty much cover it?

With a pair of shears and common sense, the average briefing could be trimmed to a maximum of half its length, resulting in a lucid oration that people might actually listen to. All that's really needed is a short tutorial on the basics of exits, seat belts, flotation equipment, and oxygen masks. This shouldn't take more than a minute.

Once upon a time, when riding along as a passenger, I would shoot dirty looks at those who ignored the demo and even made a point of paying undue attention just to help the cabin staff feel useful. After a while, realizing that neither the FAA nor the airlines has much interest in cleaning up this ornamental gibberish, I stopped caring. Note: this does not excuse those passengers who insist on carrying on conversations over the announcements, effectively doubling the volume. Whether we need to hear a flight attendant explain the operation of a seat belt is disputable, but we definitely do
not
need to hear the guy in row 25 talking about his favorite seafood restaurant in Baltimore.

Reach into the seat pocket, and you'll discover a pictorial version of the same fatty babble: the always popular fold-out safety card. These too are a pedantic nod to the FARs. The talent levels of the artists speak for themselves; the drawings appear to be a debased incarnation of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Still worse are the cards spelling out the emergency exit row seating requirements. The rules covering who can or can't sit adjacent to the doors and hatches were a controversy for some time, and one result was a new standard in FAR superfluity—an excruciating litany set to cardboard and packed with enough regulatory technobabble to set anyone's head spinning. Exit row passengers are asked to review this information before takeoff, which is a bit like asking them to learn Japanese in twelve minutes.

As for announcements made by pilots, there are company guidelines for acceptable tone and content. You'll find stipulations against discussions of politics, religion, and anything derogatory. Sayeth your General Operations Manual, chapter five, verse 12: Jokes, off-color innuendo or slurs of any kind are forbidden. Thou shalt maintain only nonconfrontational rapport, lest the Chief Pilot summon and smite thee. Rules might also restrict—and not without good intentions—the use of potentially frightening language or alarming buzzwords. One airline I worked for had a policy banning any announcement that began with the words, “Your attention please.” I strongly advocate the recitation of college football scores be added to the list of prohibitions, but that's just me.

“Your attention please. Southeastern Central Nebraska Tech has just kicked a last-minute field goal to pull ahead of North Southwestern Methodist State, 31–28.”

We should also be careful not to overburden people with information they can't use. Take the weather. Does anybody care that the wind is blowing from the southwest at 14 knots or what the dew point is? They want to know if it's sunny, cloudy, rainy, or snowy and what the temperature is.

Another no-no is, or should be, launching into complicated, jargon-rich explanations. “Yeah, uh, ladies and gentlemen, looks like 31L at Kennedy just fell to less than an eighth. It's under six hundred right now on all three RVR. They're calling it Cat III, and we're only Cat II up here, so, um, we're gonna do a few turns over the VOR, then spin around and shoot the ILS to 22L. They've got a three-hundred and a half over there.”

Thanks.

To a degree, each of these is open to interpretation, but there are four standard cabins: first class, business class, economy class, and Ryanair. Or, okay, there are three: first, business, and economy. The latter is often called coach or tourist, and you might hear first and business referred to collectively as the “premium” cabins.

An airline may configure a plane with all three classes, two of them, or just one. The number of cabins, as well as the seating styles and amenities within, will differ from plane to plane and market to market. The premium cabins on longer-haul flights tend to be markedly more luxurious—with private sleeper pods, widescreen video, and so forth—than those found on shorter hauls. As a general rule, first class is more luxurious (and more expensive) than business, but it's relative. Long-haul business class is usually fancier than domestic U.S. or intra-Europe first class.

Several airlines blur the distinctions through gimmicky branding techniques. Virgin Atlantic has only one premium cabin, which it calls “Upper Class.” China Airlines has “Dynasty Class,” while Alitalia's premium passengers relax in “Magnifica Class.” To sweeten the implications of “economy,” Air France sells tickets for “Voyageur” class. British Airways offers three different economy classes and three different business classes, all with different names, depending on the route. If that's not confusing enough, Continental Airlines (now part of United) came up with something called, in all possible obfuscation, “BusinessFirst.” Somewhere in the fine print, and in the price, you can figure out which of the traditional subdivisions they're talking about.