The Federal Aviation Administration is planning on easing restrictions for the use of e-readers during takeoff and landing. If you tend to fly frequently, this is good news for people who like to read and the whole initiative is due to be changed by 2014.
The FAA has started an independent commission to look into the viability of e-readers on airplanes, with Amazon, Boeing, CEA, and people from the FCC. Their mandate is to see if e-reading emits anything odd that would send people into a fiery doom. The results of their brain trust is poised to be released July 1st, 2013.
“So it’s O.K. to have iPads in the cockpit; it’s O.K. for flight attendants — and they are not in a panic — yet it’s not O.K. for the traveling public,” Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, said. “A flying copy of ‘War and Peace’ is more dangerous than a Kindle.”
Most people agree the FAA has been very lax in easing restrictions on devices that are in airplane mode, or have no outgoing data streaming. Considering how the pace of technological innovation is changing our world, airlines and the regulatory body have been very slow in adopting the change. I hope that in the coming months the FAA wakes up and other countries will start to allow people to use their e-readers more liberally.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
