Subject:  Activated cell phones on airlines (fwd)
Date:     Thu, 3 Sep 1998 082740 -0500 (CDT)
From:     "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@mail.llion.org>
To:       emfguru@hotmail.com
--------------------------------------------------


.......This morning's news is of a mysterious air crash off Newfoundland
(soon after take-off) by a Swissair passenger plane with 229 lives
lost................(Item below is very interesting......)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 08:44:45 -0400
From: Stephanie Dickson 
To: "Roy L. Beavers" 
Subject: Activated cell phones on airlines

Dear Roy,

Last night my husband received a cell phone call from a gentleman about to
board a flight from Salt Lake City to Denver.  Their call lasted
approximately fifteen minutes.  After twenty or so minutes our phone rang
again.  This time no caller but we could hear, very clearly, two gentlemen
talking sales figures and in the background flight arrival and departure
information.  We speculated that our last caller had mistakenly knocked the
send button on his cellphone and had reconnected to our number.  Over the
next twenty minutes we could clearly hear him as he boarded his flight and
settled into his seat aboard the plane.  We tried everything we could to
alert him by blowing whistles down the phone and shouting loudly, but to no
avail.  When it appeared that the conversations had quieted down and we had
got nowhere in warning him, we broke the call even though we realized his
cell phone was probably still activated during take-off.  This raises some
concerns.  If you see the number of people using cell phones at airports how
many of these people keep their cell phones active during take-off.  I have
seen, many times, airline officials requesting passengers to switch off
their cell phones but how many such people break the call (if that) without
switching the cell phone completely off?  How easy it is to knock the send
button to connect to your last caller.  This would also raise the issue that
if the phone is not switched off, calls can be received as well!  From my
past experience in "corporate America" I can tell you the following.  Before
I was "educated" in the science of EMF's and while working for a very sales
driven company, I would often call our executives, knowing they were
boarding their flight, to get last minute information to them.  This was
very common in our company.

My question, therefore, is this:  Can activated cell phones (those not
switched off) interfere with airline computer systems?  If so, why don't the
airlines confiscate all cell phones and ensure they are switched off and
then return them to their owners once the plane has landed safely?  The
airlines cannot guarantee passengers will switch off their cell phones and
therefore it seems to me this is jeopardizing the passengers safety.

On a final note, our experience last night is not the first of it's kind!
Isn't that a scary thought!







Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html