Yesterday a House committee voted to approve a bill that would ban voice calls on airplanes, in the event that the Federal Communications Commission lifts the current ban on in-flight cell-phone use, a move it is considering.
This is an issue with bipartisan and bicameral support because most Americans, and especially congressmen, who tend to fly more than the average citizen, find the prospect of having to overhear other people’s cell-phone conversations on flights really annoying.
As Republican senator Lamar Alexander, one of the Senate bill’s co-sponsors, put it in December, “This legislation is about avoiding something nobody wants: nearly 2 million passengers a day, hurtling through space, trapped in 17-inch-wide seats, yapping their innermost thoughts.”
Granted, that sounds unpleasant: But by what rationale does the federal government have a role here? The justification for the longstanding FCC ban on cell-phone use was that it presented a safety issue. The idea was that cell-phones could emit radio signals that would interfere with aircraft-communications equipment and ground networks. The FCC is in the process of arriving at a decision about whether these technical concerns are outdated.
Its determination will have no bearing on whether airlines should allow cell-phone data use or voice calls, only on whether they may. “Ultimately, if the FCC adopts new rules, it will be the airlines’ decision, in consultation with their customers whether to permit the use of data, text and/or voice services while airborne,” the agency explains. So airlines will be perfectly free to respond to their customers’ wishes by continuing to ban cell-phone calls during flights.
Senator Alexander thinks that while “keeping phone conversations private on commercial flights may not be enshrined in the Constitution . . . it is certainly enshrined in common sense.”
One of the Democratic supporters of the House bill, Representative Nick Rahall of West Virginia, points out that flying is already a terrible experience so it would be a bad thing if it got worse: “The prospect of sitting among dozens of people all talking on their cell phones in a confined space raises serious safety, if not comfort, considerations especially at a time when passengers face less legroom, higher fees and pricey flights.”
“Adding a quiet car, as Amtrak does on many corridor trains, would not be an option,” he added.
Every day buses hurtle along our highways with thousands of passengers in cramped conditions who have no access to quiet cars, with nothing but the policies of the bus companies to stand between them and the obnoxious phone conversations of their fellow travelers. And yet somehow this is not a crisis that Congress feels the need to address. Of course, not very many congressmen ride the bus.