AMTA has noted the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s findings this week that the sudden loss of altitude by a Qantas jet was the result of a malfunction of an air data computer and mobile phones were not in any way involved in the incident.

AMTA Chief Executive Officer, Chris Althaus, said although some commentators had speculated in the media that the incident could have been caused by a mobile phone interfering with the aircraft’s electronic equipment, air safety experts had exonerated mobile phones from any role in the incident.

“Contrary to these claims that somehow mobile phones were implicated in the incident, there is no substantiated proof mobile phones can interfere with aircraft systems from within the passenger cabin,” he said.

The British Civil Aviation Authority has conducted tests which found simulated mobile phone transmissions interfered with some avionic equipment when placed within 30cm of the avionic equipment which ais found on the flight deck. While these results are relevant to aircrew, they are not as relevant to commercial airline passengers.

Modern aircraft are designed to meet stringent international safety standards including requirements dictating comprehensive shielding of the planes wiring and electronic systems. These shielding requirements are specifically intended to prevent electromagnetic interference. In fact, aircraft routinely deal with large sources of electromagnetic energy such as from high power airport radar systems.

Mr Althaus said although there is no clear evidence that mobile phones can interfere with aircraft systems from within the passenger cabin, they can cause network interference if used from an aircraft.

“Potentially, several mobile phone cell sites could pick up the same signal from a mobile phone call made from an airplane flying at a high rate of speed over many sites. Multiply this effect by hundreds of phone calls being made from an aircraft in a holding pattern over Sydney airport, for example, and the network could become overloaded,” he said.

Mr Althaus said this problem had been overcome with the development of technology that allowed mobile phones to be used inflight through the use of pico cell systems that allowed crew and passengers to use safely their own mobile phone handsets while flying.