Alec Baldwin. American Airlines. Flight Attendants.

The Alec Baldwin/American Airlines ruckus is all over the news, and I'm hearing wildly varying viewpoints on the subject of electronic inflight devices, in addition to some bashing of flight attendants and airlines.

My big-picture perspective as a former airline employee who's had to sit in endless equipment certification meetings: 

The cabin has to be in a very specific state once the doors are closed in order for the aircraft to be able to take off.  Flight attendants play an integral part in making sure this state is initiated and maintained, and are required to communicate safety regulations to passengers as clearly and succinctly as possible – one of which is to turn off all electronic devices after doors close.  They have the difficult job of getting 150 or more people to behave consistently and safely in a pressurized tube shooting 30,000 feet into the air at 500 miles per hour.

Cut them some slack.

And for those who say that it’s not scientifically proven that such devices disrupt flight operations – do you really want something that important to be determined by millions of individual passengers  on an ad-hoc, spur-of-the-moment basis? Or should we leave it up to the avionics and mechanical engineers whose job it is to conduct years of ground and inflight testing, in order to gain the multiple FAA certifications needed to allow any electronic device inflight? I prefer the latter.

Comments

[Kerwin]

While its still inconclusively proven that the devices do interfere with the electronics, the crews word is the last word on the flights.

I met Alec on a flight once, so I can understand what transpired...

[Valerie]

Exactly Kerwin. The crew - this includes the pilots and flight attendants as well as airline employees - have a deeper understanding of the level of detail involved than the average passenger would. And you're right - some devices may have no or minimal impact on flight ops. But b/c of the many levels of customization- of each consumer device as well as the airline's aircraft configuration -- the amount of time, money and resources that would have to be put towards certification might be prohibitive.