Nobody wants to sit on a long flight listening to the person next to them have a chat on their phone, and after seven years it looks as though the FCC finally agrees.
Not many of us are taking flights at the moment, but with multiple COVID-19 vaccines on the horizon, it’s sure to become a very busy form of transport again soon. And many (most?) of you will be glad to hear that when we are all flying again, in-flight voice calls definitely aren’t happening.
The proposal for in-flight voice calls above 10,000 feet was introduced by the FCC back in 2013. It was not a welcome proposal, with Delta even going so far as to vow never to offer such calls on its flights. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai hinted that the proposal was going to be killed in 2017, but it lived on until now.
As Bloomberg reports, an FCC filing cited strong opposition to the proposal from both pilots and flight attendants. Business Traveller quotes from the filing, with the FCC concluding it couldn’t, “determine any reasonable solution that would strike an appropriate balance of competing interests.”
Since 2013, methods of communication while flying have expanded greatly due to a growing number of flights offering internet access. Not being able to chat on a phone certainly doesn’t stop you conversing with people on the ground anymore.
