Wearable Gadgets Upset F.A.A. Curbs on Devices
Pity the poor flight attendant. They didn't sign up for this: millions of petulant airline passengers surreptitiously reading digital books and magazines on their iPads or Kindles during takeoff and landing. — The flight attendants' job was never easy.
Context & Ripple Effects
The enforcement problem the F.A.A. faces has been building for months: tests in late 2011 cast doubt on whether Kindles and iPads actually threaten aircraft, and by March 2012 Bits was arguing it was time to review the agency's gadget policy outright. What this piece adds is a new wrinkle — wearable gadgets that passengers cannot simply stow or switch off are straining a rule built around the assumption that every device has an off switch.
The story also lands amid a broader iPad moment in air travel, with airports handing out free iPads to travelers just days earlier, so the population of devices flight attendants must police is growing from both directions: more tablets in seatbacks and more electronics strapped to wrists.
First-order effects
- Flight attendants bear the immediate cost: they must enforce a takeoff-and-landing ban against millions of passengers already reading on iPads and Kindles, plus wearables that defy easy compliance.
- Passengers wearing always-on gadgets face an unworkable choice between removing items like watches and glasses or quietly breaking the rule.
Second-order effects
- Airlines are pushed toward either laxer cabin enforcement or formal pressure on the F.A.A. to re-examine rules their own crews cannot consistently apply.
- Device makers gain an implicit argument that regulation should track tested interference risk rather than device categories — a case strengthened by the earlier test results questioning the Kindle and iPad restrictions.
Third-order effects
- If compliance keeps eroding, the F.A.A.'s category-by-category device bans give way to evidence-based testing regimes, shifting the burden from flight attendants' enforcement to regulators proving harm.
- Consumer electronics designed to be worn continuously force aviation policy to abandon the 'turn it off' model entirely — a structural break with how in-flight rules have worked since portable devices appeared.
The trend: Consumer electronics are proliferating faster than aviation regulators can test them, pushing device rules from blanket bans toward evidence-based limits.