Friday Facts- Why Can't I Use My Cell Phone on a Plane?

As long as you're willing to pay for it, you can now do pretty much whatever you want on an airplane: Hop on Wi-Fi, watch movies, play videogames, and in some first-class cabins you can even, ahem, recline with a friend. So why can't you use a cell phone? Despite what fear-mongering flight attendants say, making a call probably won't send your plane on a collision course with a tropical island populated by smoke monsters and Evangeline Lilly.

Sure, your mobile can interfere with avionics — in theory. But in practice, it's far from likely. Cockpits and communications systems have been protected against electromagnetic meddling through safeguards like shielded wiring and support structures since the 1960s.

So why the resistance? Part of it, naturally, comes from the call carriers. When phones ping for signals at 35,000 feet, they can hit hundreds of towers at once, necessitating complicated parsing of roaming agreements. Providers don't want the hassle if they're not being properly compensated, so the government has left the plane ban in place.

Although the technical problem is not insurmountable, the carriers, the FCC, and the FAA are not just being lazy — there's simply not enough demand for them to act. "Americans don't want to be stuck next to some Chatty Cathy bragging about last night's conquest," says Henry Harteveldt, an airline-industry analyst at Forrester. The research firm has conducted surveys showing that only 16 percent of US fliers are interested in using cell phones on planes; most people are vehemently opposed.

OnAir, an Airbus spinoff that peddles air-to-ground communications, is banking on the assumption that travelers outside the US are more eager for their service. The company already has an airborne cellular system in European trials, and by year's end it plans to outfit dozens of planes. OnAir gets around the roaming issue by creating an independent cellular network in each plane and a "noise floor" that masks the bird from terrestrial towers.

If the model proves profitable, then it's probably inevitable that cell service will earn its wings. "We're convinced that Americans love their cell phones as much as Euros or Asians," says David Russell, COO of OnAir. "But in the US, everyone likes to wait and see." Chatty Cathy might get her captive audience after all.