Are Personal Electronics on Planes Safe?

July 20 -- The safety of cell phones, computers and even hearing aids on airplanes will be the topic of a Congressional subcommittee hearing today.

A 1996 study on how personal electronics affect airplane navigational systems came up inconclusive. But the Federal Aviation Administration has banned the devices anyway, saying they can’t take the chance.

Now a Massachusetts company says they can show who’s using electronic devices without permission, but that the FAA won’t ante up the $750,000 to build the gadgetry to find out.

“We submitted the proposal exactly two years ago, to the day, and we’ve been waiting by the phone ever since,” said Marshall Cross, president of Boylston-based Megawave Corp.

Risky Radiation

An airline industry-run advisory organization called the RTCA released a report in 1996 saying that the risk of portable electronics interfering with navigational systems “is low at this time,” but that the devices were “potentially hazardous and an unacceptable risk” during takeoff and landing.

The only hard evidence that electronics cause problems is anecdotal, but scary. An aviation safety database kept by NASA recorded incidents in 1995 and 1997 where malfunctioning navigational systems were apparently fixed when flight crew forced passengers to switch off laptops and cell phones.

That’s enough for the FAA, said spokeswoman Alison Duquette.

“We’re pretty conservative here ... we definitely err on the side of caution,” she said.

Cell phones on planes, at least, cause proven problems; the FCC bans them because ground-based cell towers get confused by signals from the air.

But passengers don’t seem to be convinced. After alcohol, restrictions on personal electronics are the second leading cause of “air rage” among travelers, subcommittee staffers said.

Personal electronics emit signals that fly out airplane windows and get picked up by navigational antennas, Megawave’s Cross said. The costly seat-back phones on the planes transmit on strictly controlled frequencies and don’t cause problems, he said.