‘I’m on the plane’: the disturbing idea of airborne phone calls

On many flights, the ban on mobile phones is observed only begrudgingly, with cabin crew prising handsets from the fingers of besuited businessmen. Soon, new rules mean they’ll be chatting away merrily throughout the flight, and that’s going to add a whole new kind of pain to the already fraught business of long-haul air travel.

Most of us struggle to believe that something we carry in our pocket could bring down a Jumbo Jet. As Toby Ziegler says in The West Wing: "We’re flying in a Lockheed Eagle series L-1011. It came off the line 20 months ago and carries a Sim-5 transponder tracking system. Are you telling me I can flummox this thing with something I bought at Radio Shack?"

Personally, I’m always happy to turn off my phone, regardless of whether it threatens the navigation system. It’s one of the few times when no one can reach me, and I enjoy the feeling of dropping off the grid. For others, being constantly on call means being constantly productive, and for them making calls in the air could be very lucrative. For the rest of us, it’s just going to be annoying.

Public use of mobile phones has proved beyond doubt that the least interesting people have the most to say and the loudest voices with which to say it. They also tend to have annoying ringtones. Sitting next to one of these people on a transatlantic flight is not going to be pleasant: apart from the usual irritations of an inane and one-sided phone call, which will be the same in the sky as it is at sea level, airborne mobile use will introduce several new annoyances: