Your suggestion is illogical and unworkable. Because the time take to search the plane for transmitting phones would be anywhere from 0 to say 30 mins for a phone left on at the bottom of a suitcase.
How on earth would you then schedule flights when you don't have a fixed journey time ? How would connecting flights work ?
Airlines revolve around managing risk. They don't ground flights during wet weather even though it's slightly more risky to fly. Likewise they don't need to switch off every phone. Just enough of them to get the risk down to an acceptable threshold.
You could also imagine that the punishment for leaving a cell-phone was much more severe. I'm not totally in agreement with the article, but it is strange that the airline claims a phone that's switched on is a major problem, yet the way of enforcing that they are of is by giving stern looks.
The rule can very easily be broken which suggests that it is useless. They either have much stricter enforcement or none at all.
The comparison with weather conditions is problematic since there is no way to control the weather while you could introduce a detection system and severe punishments for cell phone use.
You seem to be missing the key point here: risk management.
Nobody has said that phones are a major risk compared to all of the other risks a plane has to deal with e.g. weather, maintenance, pilot experience. Only that they do represent a risk and the status quo represents the most reasonable way to manage it.
What evidence do you have that stricter enforcement is warranted ?
> Only that they do represent a risk and the status quo represents the most reasonable way to manage it.
And yet, the status quo dictates employing people to throw out water bottles you purchased at the duty free after already having been screened for it yourself (and probably screened the store's inventory as it was coming in). And consider nail cutters a deadly weapon.
I did not read the GP to say that stricter enforcement was warranted - just that it was not in-line with how other controllable risks associated with passengers risks treated.
And yet somehow they manage to inspect the entire passenger manifest for evil nailclippers without making people miss their flight.
If there was a genuine risk, there would be an effort to screen electronic devices by their EM spectrum prior to boarding, with some devices forcibly travelling as checked luggage in an EM-shielded area. There is no such screening, hence there is no such risk. The rule exists to make you believe that your security is being taken seriously. It's a ritual that makes passengers more docile during take-off and landing, just like many of the other pre-flight safety instructions given by a cabin crew.
How on earth would you then schedule flights when you don't have a fixed journey time ? How would connecting flights work ?
Airlines revolve around managing risk. They don't ground flights during wet weather even though it's slightly more risky to fly. Likewise they don't need to switch off every phone. Just enough of them to get the risk down to an acceptable threshold.