FCC confirms it may allow mobile calls during flight, but airlines have final say (update)
The FCC has confirmed that on December 12th, it will consider a proposal that would give airlines the option to let passengers make cellphone calls during flight. But the Commission is also attempting …
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands one day after the WSJ first reported it, and the confirmation turned it into a rare all-outlet story: the Washington Post, AP, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and MIT Technology Review all picked it up on the same day. The substance is narrow but the audience is everyone who flies, which explains the pickup.
It also closes a loop that has been open a while. The FCC's own chairman, Julius Genachowski, pressed the FAA back in December 2012 to allow greater in-flight use of portable electronics, and the idea of airborne cellphone chat has been revisited and shelved before — a 2007 wave of airline plans collapsed under technical and passenger pushback. The difference this time is where the decision sits: the December 12th proposal, following yesterday's report, would leave the call/no-call choice to each airline rather than the government.
First-order effects
- Each US airline gains a binary commercial choice: adopt onboard calling above 10,000 feet or keep its cabins phone-free, turning cabin policy into a visible, advertised differentiator between carriers.
- Passengers' rights flip from a federal guarantee of silence to whatever their chosen carrier decides — the FCC sets the technical frame, but no regulator is promising a quiet flight.
Second-order effects
- Carriers that opt in must invest in airborne connectivity equipment and pricing for voice service, while those that opt out can market quiet cabins at zero infrastructure cost — splitting the industry into two product tiers on an amenity passengers feel immediately.
- Consumer backlash becomes the enforcement mechanism: with the ban lifted federally, objections to loud calls shift to airlines' own policies and to Congress/DOT channels rather than the FCC, raising the political cost of lifting the ban if adoption goes badly.
Third-order effects
- If the proposal passes, in-flight electronics regulation completes its drift from blanket federal prohibition to carrier-level discretion — the same direction Genachowski pushed with the FAA in 2012 — leaving etiquette as a competitive variable rather than a legal one.
- Whether the 2007 pattern repeats (airlines quietly declining to offer the service) or calling becomes standard will be decided by passenger behavior, not the FCC — making this vote less a rule change than a transfer of authority to the airlines.
The trend: US in-flight electronics rules are migrating from blanket federal bans toward operator-level discretion, with regulators defining what is technically permissible and airlines deciding what customers actually experience.