Tests Cast Doubt on F.C.C. Restrictions on Kindle and iPad
The Federal Aviation Administration has its reasons for preventing passengers from reading from their Kindles and iPads during takeoff and landing. But they just don't add up. — Since I wrote a column last month asking why these rules exist …
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece extends an argument the Bits columnist began with a column the previous month asking why the takeoff-and-landing ban exists at all; the new element is testing whose results, he argues, do not support the F.A.A.'s stated reasons for requiring Kindles and iPads to be switched off during the most sensitive phases of flight.
The stakes are scale rather than novelty: by October 2011 the iPad accounted for 97% of tablet web traffic and was generating more traffic than the iPhone, so the rule touches a large and fast-growing share of passengers, not an early-adopter fringe.
First-order effects
- Passengers flying with Kindles and iPads continue to face mandatory device shutdowns during takeoff and landing even as the reported tests undercut the technical case for them.
- The F.A.A. is pressed to defend its restriction with demonstrable evidence rather than assumption, following a public challenge that began with the columnist's November column.
Second-order effects
- Apple and Amazon, whose flagship devices are named in the rule, have a direct interest in the outcome: any loosening converts enforced dead time into usable product time on every flight.
- Airlines and their cabin crews are left enforcing a rule whose stated justification the reporting calls into question, adding friction between crews and passengers over compliance.
Third-order effects
- If empirically grounded challenges like this accumulate, regulation of personal electronics in aviation shifts from precautionary default bans toward evidence-based limits negotiated with device makers and carriers.
- The broader structural point is that consumer electronics adoption cycles are running faster than aviation safety rulemaking, leaving regulators permanently reviewing rules written for a smaller-device era.
The trend: Consumer electronics adoption is outrunning aviation safety rules, pushing the F.A.A. toward evidence-based review of in-flight device restrictions.