Airline Passengers Could Soon Use Cell Phones In Flight

[Minstrel Boy]

but, uh, I thought....

Airline Passengers Could Soon Use Cell Phones In Flight
American Airlines Tests New Technology



...

To keep passengers from losing contact, engineers are building a communications system where calls inside an airplane would go from a cell phone to a small device that acts like a cell tower on the aircraft. The signal then travels to a satellite antenna on board, to a satellite in orbit, and then down to a relay station on the ground where your cell provider sends the call to its destination.

The projected cost for the service is less than $1 a minute.

American Airlines spokeswoman Martha Pantin said the test flight showed the calls can work.

"The people on this test flight were able make calls using Sprint technology or the phones they were lent. It went well," Pantin said.
http://www.nbc6.net/news/3605102/detail.html

Miracles and Wonders
by Alan Cabal

Before this new "Pico cell," it was nigh on impossible to make a call from a passenger aircraft in flight. Connection is impossible at altitudes over 8000 feet or speeds in excess of 230 mph.

Yet despite this, passengers Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Jeremy Glick and Edward Felt all managed to place calls from Flight 93 on the morning of September 11. Peter Hanson, en route to Disneyland with his wife and daughter, phoned his dad from Flight 175. Madeline Amy Sweeney, a flight attendant, made a very dramatic call from Flight 11 as it sped to the North Tower. Barbara Olson made two calls, collect, to her husband at his government office from Flight 77 as it made its way to the Pentagon.

Each call was initially reported as coming from a cellphone. Later, when skepticism reared its ugly head and the Grassy Knollers arrived, the narrative became fuzzy; it was suggested that $10-a-minute Airfones were involved. Olson was an easy candidate for Airfone (one doesn't call collect from a cell), but as the stories developed, Olson—and Felt—were said to have called from inside locked lavatories. No Airfone there.

In the very near future, numerous technological miracles and wonders will rise up out of the ashes of that terrible day, much the way the space program supposedly gave us Tang and Velcro. Satam Al-Suqami's indestructible passport, for one, is currently under the microscope in the Reverse Engineering Department at Area 51. My old passport was falling apart when I finally replaced it last year, just from spending 10 years in my pocket. His survived the destruction of the World Trade Center. I want one of those.
http://www.nypress.com/17/30/news%26columns/AlanCabal.cfm

[heidiho]

1. Great, now we'll have to listen to people blah blah blahing

while we're trying to sleep or concentrate - also those annoying ringtones will wake you up from your well-deserved sleep.

Can't wait!!! The last bastion of quiet broken by The Flight of the Bumblebee!

[hatrack]

2. Great, the tsunami of nattering continues to rise

Now that some National Parks are installing cell phone towers, it looks like experimental deep-sea dive facilities will be the only locations on the planet free from cell-phone drivel.

"Yeah, yeah, we're on the airplane. No, on the AIRPLANE!! The PLANE!! Yeah, we left about an hour ago. No, we're over some city - I think it's Denver. There's a bunch of mountains. No, on the AIRPLANE!! Can you hear me? You're breaking up!! . . . "

[democrat in Tallahassee]

3. but didn't Barbara Olson call from her cell phone on 9/11?

or maybe I dreamt it. or maybe it was a lie?

[jmcgowanjm]

8. The Mother of All Lies

Without the “eminent” Barbara Olson and her alleged
emotional telephone calls, there would never be any proof
that humans played a role in the hijack and destruction of
the four aircraft that day.

http://www.geocities.com/subliminalsuggestion/olson.html

[Veggie Meathead]

15. Just to confirm it, why don't we ask the Eminent Miss Barbara

who is probably meeting with her Eminent husband Ted Olson in Brazil,with an assumed name and an unassuming wig. I relish the irony that our rightwing Nazis are taking up residence in Brazil, the sanctuary for many Nazis on the run.

[vincent_vega_lives]

17. Cell phones certainly work from airliners

they just aren't allowed because under the current system they are disruptive to aircraft avionics and the cell nodes.

[Kellanved]

4. As there already are planes with broadband internet,

this seems a little outdated.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/01/nalco01.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/08/01/ixportal.html

[Corgigal]

5. Grassy Knollers ?

Hmmm. Why because we didn't buy everything we were told? I love being put into the mentally unstable box because sometimes my gut and my logic tells me the media and law enforcement can lie. Funny thing is this article calls me a "Grassy Knoller" and then turns around and states well OK, they were right about calling collect on a cell.

[Minstrel Boy]

6. I think he's using it ironically.

Or so thinks Minstrel Boy, proud member of the Grassy Knoll Society.

[qanda]

7. There are a lot of questions about the validity of phone calls

On the morning of 9/11. Those questions need to be answered and not with "Grassy Knoller" comments. If the press was really doing its job it wouldn't be up to us to speculate-- we would have answers to these very real questions.

[jmcgowanjm]

9. Ted Olsen, the OJ of 911

Why have we never seen an interview w/
this guy?

Her husband said she called him twice on a cell phone
from American Airlines Flight 77,

Ted Olson told CNN that his wife said all passengers
and
flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the
back
of the plane by armed hijackers. The only
weapons
she mentioned were knives and cardboard
cutters.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson/

September 12, 2001 Posted: 2:06 AM EDT (0606 GMT)

Now, what would you be doing the day your wife died?

About the last thing on your mind to be the US Solicitor General], would be to pick up a
telephone and call the CNN Atlanta news desk in order to
give them a “scoop”. As a seasoned politician you would
already know that all matters involving national security must
first be vetted by the National Security Council. Under
the extraordinary circumstances and security overkill existing
on September 11, this vetting process would have taken
a minimum of two days, and more likely
three.
          The timing of the CNN news release about Barbara
Olson, is therefore as impossible as the New Zealand
press release back in 1963 about the assassination
of President John F. Kennedy. As reported independently
by Colonel Fletcher Prouty USAF (Retired), whoever set
Kennedy up, accidentally launched a  full international
newswire biography on obscure “killer” Lee Harvey
Oswald, without first taking the trouble to check his world
clock.

http://www.geocities.com/subliminalsuggestion/olson.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. So they're now admitting the current reason for not using them

is bullshit.

"Pilots just want to make sure the phone signals don't interfere with their radios or navigation gear during takeoff and landing, and especially in bad weather.

"It would be nice to know that our instruments aren't going to be affected at all by the cell phones," pilot Steve Nalbandian said. "There really hasn't been any conclusive evidence that they affect the radio systems.""

And yet they still tell us we can't even use our phones until we're inside the terminal building. They ban them all through the flight, because they claim it interferes with the plane's equipment.

[et]

13. Cell network confusion

My understanding from reading past technical articles is that the cell phone issues are more related to the cellular companies themselves. The high speed travel of an airliner with active cell phones on board results in lots and lots of activity as each cell phone passes from one ground-based cell to the next in rapid succession. Sounds like it adds lots of overhead to the cellular switches that impacts on system performance.

I've not heard of any credible reports of interference caused by cell phones in commercial jets. If this were a true problem, we'd be seeing copper mesh used in the cabin area to dampen signals.

[stickdog]

11. The phony phone calls of Phlight 93.

Whatta surprise.

[ixion]

12. it was nigh on impossible to make a call from a passenger aircraft

in flight... but somehow, along with many of the laws of Physics, Chemistry and Thermodynamics, this impossibility was temporarily suspended for certain objects (allegedly 4 planes and two buildings, to be presice) on 9/11.

Someone please explain to me again why I am a conspiracy theorist for questioning the 'official' story.

"If there's any doubt, there is no doubt."
-- Robert De Niro
'Ronin'

[daleo]

14. And yet Bush's cell phone in his car wasn't working that day

Or, at least that's the story.

[SoCalDem]

16. 3, 2, 1.......look out !!!

I posted this last week and was mercilessly assailed ...:evilgrin:..