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I was on a jet the other day and the pilot came on the intercom and said that we were going to circle for an indefinite amount of time and ground control would not tell him why.

Huh?

Being me, my first thought was Something Big was going on. But I had no way of knowing. No cell phone and the plane had no airphone on board. So, I got to thinking, what I need is a pager that can transmit text messages and have service nationwide…this way, I can sign up with various LMI websites or organizations that send pager alerts in case anything goes on. I could be at 36,000 feet wondering whats going on, or I could have a pager message that says “EAST COAST BLACKED OUT. CAUSE UNKNOWN. NO WORD FROM FEDS…..”

So, now I need to find nationwide-service paging……….ideas?

11 thoughts on “”

  4. Provided they don’t monitor the signal traffic in some way to detect whether someone has one running. I don’t honestly know if they do, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.

  5. sorry, but i know nothing about pagers, so i can’t help you there

    i found a signature line on another MB that sounds like advice you’d give “Always keep your pants & gun where you can find them in the dark”

  6. I’m fairly sure they don’t. Besides the fact that such data is never used in all those inconclusive studies done on whether or not radio, cell, and pager use actually interferes with plane operation, I personally have forgotten to turn off the wireless service on my phone several times while using it (to play games, to read books) on the plane and have never been called on it. I was pretty scared the first time it happened, though–as soon as I noticed I was still getting a GPRS signal I was sure the plane was going to plummet to the ground, or at the very least I was going to be led off the plane by people in uniform. 😉

  7. Pagers are easy. Skytel has great nationwide service.

    Problem though: Pagers dont work at altitude either. They are supposed to be turned off during flight by FAA rules, and its pointless to have them on, because they just dont work at flight altitude.

    Youd get your pages when you hit the ground just like phone calls (assuming you have nationwide guaranteed delivery).

    Great idea since pagers tend to cover more area than phones though. I still do not find a cellphone to be an adequate subsitute for a plain old pager.

  8. Assuming that you don’t need to actually send message then your pager wouldn’t qualify as an intentional radiator and could likely be legally operated during the period of time that isn’t takeoff and landing. Unfortunately the FAA regs aren’t completely clear on this topic leaving some room for interpretation by the various airlines.

    Certainly, if you were discretely using suck a device and were noticed, they’d be less likely to hassle you if the device isn’t an intentional radiator like a cell-phone or a two-way pager. It’s also been my experience that pagers work better in the air than cell phones since cell phone antennas on cell sites are less omnidirectional than pager transmitter antennas. The signal level required to succesfully transmit a message is also much less significant.

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