14 DAY TRIAL // Having a comfortable flight can often depend on such an apparently insignificant thing as being offered the option of choosing between tens of movies, shows or music tracks. Enter in-flight entertainment systems, which offer customers a wide range of choices. They also expose the same customers to the danger of losing their life in a plane crash or during an emergency landing, it has been recently said.
Ron Goltsch, an electrical engineer in Parsippany, N.J., is a frequent flier and a fan of the new technology that brings the entire world at the tip of his fingers. According to USA Today, he is also one of the many to raise safety concerns regarding the in-flight systems.
Each system placed under the arm of the chair generates too much heat (105 to 115 degrees) when not in use, and not few have been the cases when they have been just the thing to force a pilot to make an emergency landing.
“Airline maintenance workers filed nearly 400 reports of difficulty with the systems to the Federal Aviation Administration during the past 10 years, according to a USA Today analysis of FAA data. In the most serious cases, smoke from the systems forced pilots to shut them down and make emergency landings.” the aforementioned publication adds to Goltsch’s words that “Heat and electronics don’t mix well.”
Not paying attention to these reports and the numbers made public means ignoring the facts, it has also been noted. “We could be setting ourselves up for a déjà vu disaster,” Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, says for the same publication, referring to the Swissair jet crash of 11 years ago. “Any time more wiring is added to an aircraft, there is more chance for something to go wrong.” Schiavo pinpoints.
According to the publication, most of the reports filed with the FAA in recent years speak of “burning odors or smoke in the passenger cabin or cockpit.” All of them have been properly analyzed, and the conclusion would be that there has been nothing wrong with in-flight entertainment systems. Despite constant reassurances, doubts over the safety of such systems still linger, the publication concludes by saying.