John L. Hawkins's picture

Airlines are CLUELESS about electronics

My favorite flight attendant instruction is, "You must turn off everything that has an on/off switch." What they don't grasp is that very few if any of today's electronic devices go OFF when the switch is "off".

If a switch is "soft" to push (no CLUNK), or if the device has a remote control, the so-called on/off switch only puts the device to sleep, more or less, but not OFF.

Cellphones don't truly go off, though the "off" state does shut down the radio transmitter, which is the main thing airlines should care about.

The only true "off" is achieved by removing ALL power, such as by removing all the batteries. Do airlines require this? Nope.

Even most wristwatches are electronic, and they can't be shut off. So, all that airlines can hope to achieve is to REDUCE the amount of electronic activity; they can never get it to zero.

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