Flight attendants want your portable devices put away during takeoff and landing. As the Wall Street Journal reports, “Lawyers for the nation’s largest flight-attendant union argued in federal court Friday to effectively reinstate a government ban on the use of electronic devices during takeoffs and landings.”
The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA is claiming that the FAA violated federal regulations when it moved last year to permit use of the devices throughout a flight.
An attorney representing the flight attendants said that as a result of the new policy, many fliers have stopped listening to emergency instructions, and that a tablet once became a projectile during turbulence.
The Journal quotes Amanda Duré, an attorney representing the flight attendants union, as saying, “Essentially we want to set the reset button to the way personal electronic devices were handled prior to October 2013.”
But what’s next? Banning books—many of which outweigh a tablet and could become projectiles during turbulence?
As Justice Department lawyers said in a court filing, “Not every single item carried onto a plane (e.g., a cell phone, a book, a pack of gum) necessarily constitutes an ‘article of baggage’ that must be ‘stowed’ under the seat or in an overhead compartment.”
Read the Journal article here.
