Passengers' growing appetite for electronic gadgets and WiFi access is creating problems for airlines eager to sate that appetite. The challenge lies in enforcing myriad company policies and federal laws covering wireless communications.As airlines test and equip their planes for in-flight WiFi, they have to figure out how to catch people using prohibited devices (or approved devices at the wrong time) with no practical means of detecting radio-based technologies that can operate out of sight in briefcases, carry-on bags or even pockets.It’s just the latest in a set of challenges the airlines have faced with the rapid evolution of consumer electronics. The past decade has been marked by the relentless convergence of multiple technologies into single, easily concealed devices.
A single smartphone, for example, can combine the once-discrete electronics of a computer, a cellphone, a video game device, a GPS, a voice recorder, a music player, a still camera, a video camera and a broadband modem or even a wireless router.Compounding the airlines’ challenge is that some of those functions are allowed at any time during a flight, some are never allowed, and still others are allowed only after the plane has reached a cruising altitude. The hapless flight attendant who spots a passenger using such a device at any point during the flight has no way of knowing for certain which technology is functioning at any given moment.
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