August 14, 2006 at 3:06 pm · Authored by Ewan · Filed under Devices

Link: BA flight aborted after mobile phone rings.

A British Airways flight from London to New York turned around mid-flight and returned to London’s Heathrow airport after a mobile phone started ringing, the airline said.

What an arse eh?

And who was the naughty person who took their mobile on board and didn’t tell anyone? Or I wonder, perhaps the phone was left switched on in the luggage? Who knows.

I appreciate the current security concerns — however, they are absolutely 100% unworkable in the long term — unless of course we are going to turn air travel into a routine but somewhat interesting experiment in internal body cavity searches.

If authorities are going to restrict what you can take on a plane as hand luggage I think they should it properly: There’s far more danger, surely — and particularly given current restrictions — that someone will fill themselves full of explosives (I mean, literally, eat the explosives or something) and explode themselves some how. The next step has to be to xray everyone getting on to the plane to see what they’ve been eating.

The next step after that will be putting everyone in 48 hour isolation booths at Heathrow to get urine samples, do DNA tests and scan every inch of their body to check they’re not carrying a pouch of explosive inside their stomach.

Meanwhile, anyone can get on a train with a rucksack full of explosives.

I’m just annoyed at having to stick my mobile in my luggage.

What an arse. I will NOT be impressed when I next have to spend hours sat waiting for a delayed flight, if I can’t at least text someone and share the annoyance. The loser? The airlines. Big time.

Although perhaps this might prompt the airlines into doing something about it — namely changing those drab, sterile boarding gateways into more exciting, interesting areas, with complimentary cokes, magazines, newspapers, internet terminals and what not. Wouldn’t mind that so much.