Man, Japan’s usually hip to technology, but this news sorta diminishes that perception. A revised law means that passengers on board Japanese airplanes will no longer be able to use video game systems with built-in wireless functionality. So say goodbye to the DS and PSP whip out the Game Gear.
The law doesn’t stop there, oh no. It also prevents the use of pretty much everything wireless—mice, headphones, your clever little in-cabin WAP, etc. The law was revised because of all the elcetromagnetic interference caused by the banned devices. Apparently there was a danger of interfering with the airplane’s equipment.
And to think that Virgin Airlines was just beginning to make strides with its consumer electronics-friendly fleet. Also, Ilya insists that the Japanese ban is stupid since “the airplanes equipment run on completely different frequencies… also at 30,000 feet there are still plenty of stray wifi and radio signals.” Maybe he’s an engineer in his spare time?
Video games banned on Japanese planes [Hollywood Reporter]
Isn’t like all the equipment on an airplane shielded anyways?
I think MythBusters tried something like this, using cell phones (of almost all the normal cell frequencies) on a small plane, and nothing happened.
Aircraft use dedicated bands for communications. The only device which could even possibly potentially maybe influence a plane would be in the 800mhz area. If it were hella-powerful it might flood some of the comm links. But that’s pretty far fetched.
Aircraft take off and land around high power radar transmitters. They fly over areas with cell phone towers and megawatt-level TV broadcasts. They also have to deal with the possibility of an inadvertent cell phone in passenger luggage. And as such, all systems are tested and retested for reliability.
Even if it did somehow mess with something (which it would NOT) Modern aircraft have very good backup systems. Communications are on VHF, UHF, Satellite and have multiple transceivers. Navigation has inertial navigation systems, radar altimeters, optical altimeters, barometric altimeters, radar-based collision avoidance, GPS, and backup systems.
I’ve never heard of an aircraft being imperiled by a low-power consumer device. There’s a remote possibility that if it were a crazy-powerful device, then maybe it could cause problems. But this is ridiculous.