I just landed in Boston on my way to Martha’s Vineyard for a wedding tomorrow. Of course I brought my iPad with me. (It’s how I took this picture and wrote this post during a flight that was shorter than the time it took for me to get to the airport and through security.) It was a 38 minute flight. For the first ten minutes I could not use the iPad. For the last ten minutes I was told to turn it off as well. That left 18 minutes or so that the iPad was “legit” and usable. This has never made all that much sense to me. While I understand them asking us to put devices in airplane mode so the radios do not interfere, I can’t imagine my sleeping iPad having the least impact on the plane or its functioning during takeoff and landing.
It is annoying, but isn’t a big deal. Then it occurred to me that there are a number of airlines that are replacing all of the manuals and navigation maps that pilots use with iPads. That’s all good and well but if an iPad in airplane mode in the passenger cabin can be problematic wouldn’t one in even closer proximity to the plane’s navigational equipment be an issue? Or maybe the pilots aren’t allowed to use THEIRS during takeoff and landing either.
Hmmmmmmmm!!