Until boarding my flight just now, I didn’t fully appreciate the implications of the new regulation allowing passengers to keep electronics on during takeoffs and landings.
Takeoffs and landings. PHOTO LIZZY MONROEIt’s an exciting new development, but I still have to put my computer away for landings (only hand-held electronics can be out during take off and landing). So to make the most of this new regulation, make sure all of your electronic entertainment is on your smaller devices.
While cruising at 10,000 feet, I decided to make a list of what this new liberty really means for us:
Aerial Pictures of our destinations:
For those of us (like me) who rely on our phones for pictures, we can now use them to capture our first bird’s eye views of our long-awaited destinations (see Chicago, as it looks right now).
Many people will try to text as they ascend (and descend):
Very few people actually turned off all devices for take off and landing under the old regulations. I doubt many more will turn their phones to airplane mode instead. Let’s face it: You can still text until some unknown altitude is reached, at which point your efforts become useless. Many will push this limit to see when cell phone reception is lost and when it kicks back in.
Fewer people will look at Sky Mall:
Since we can just power up our Kindles or start our movies as soon as we take our seats, we no longer have that awkward 30 minutes at the beginning and end of a flight to flip through pages of furniture pieces that double as litter boxes and weird lawn decorations. Personally, I will still do this because I think looking at SkyMall’s mishmash of products is extremely entertaining, but apparently not everyone agrees with me.
Conversations with our seat partners will be even less frequent:
For the same reasons that SkyMall will be similarly neglected (as will the safety announcements at the beginning of the flight), we will no longer fill this empty time with talking to our neighbors. This could be a good or bad thing, depending on the circumstances.
Carry-ons will potentially be lighter:
I always bring a book for landing and take off. For some reason, this is a book that I completely forget about whenever I am on the ground (maybe because it lives in my carry-on suitcase). I’ve had the same book for about a year now, because I only read it in 30-minute increments when the distractions from the two bullet points that are addressed above fail.
