Update on In-Flight Cellphone Use

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved a proposed bill that would ban using cellular phones for voice calls during flights in the U.S. on Thursday. Now that the bill, named the Halting Airplane Noise to Give Us Peace (HANG UP) Act, has made this step, its next step is to go before the U.S. House of Representatives. It would need to be approved by the House, the Senate, and be signed into law by the President before it could be final.

Cellular calls in flight have long been illegal because of concerns about interference with both aviation systems on board and cellular networks on the ground. But some regions of the world are now moving ahead with in-flight calling systems. We've written about this before but I haven't heard much on the topic in the last few months.

Currently, the FAA and FCC have placed a ban on cellular calls made during flights. The HANG UP Act would make the ban permanent and in-flight calling illegal. The bill would still permit the use of cell phones for sending text messages and accessing the Internet.

In a Harris Interactive survey earlier this year commissioned by Yahoo's Connected Life Americas division, 74% of respondents said cell phone use on airplanes should be restricted to silent features. There were 2,088 adults in the U.S. surveyed.

Personally, I fall into the 26% of respondents who think voice calls on airplanes would be fine. I understand the concern about sitting next to some annoying guy who's blabbering about some useless topic but I highly doubt it would be a problem. The vast majority of people are pretty reasonable and would use their phone only if it was necessary.