Judge calls for flight ban on mobiles

Mobile phones should be seized from passengers boarding flights to ensure air safety, a judge said today.

Judge Timothy Mort made his demand as he jailed for four months a man caught playing a game on his mobile while cruising at 30,000 feet on a flight to Manchester.

"The signal from the phone is so strong it interferes with the plane's electrical system and can cause a crash,'' the judge told Faiz Chopdat, 23, of Blackburn.

Chopdat, a factory worker, was returning from his honeymoon in Egypt when he was spotted repeatedly switching on his Erikson T28 to play Tetrus. Despite a request from crew and other passengers to switch off the phone, he turned it on three times to continue his game.

Sentencing Chopdat, Judge Mort said mobile phones could prove fatal if used on a flight. "It is the act of turning on a mobile phone that creates the potential hazard for any aircraft," he said.

"Mobile phones search for a signal and aboard a flight it can affect radio fields and penetrate

wiring. The consequences could be fatal, which is why cabin crew are at pains to tell passengers to turn their mobile phones off.

"This sentence must be imposed to deter other people," he said at Minshull crown court in Manchester.

"Maybe the situation has been reached when we have to consider if mobile phones should be confiscated before transit." Chopdat had been seen using his mobile during a flight on a Boeing 747 from Luxor.

When asked to turn it off by a fellow passenger, he threatened to slap her in the face. Staff became so concerned they called airport security, and Chopdat was arrested on touchdown and accused of endangering the lives of 206 passengers and nine crew.

Chopdat said he had defied warnings to switch off his mobile because he was "buoyed up" by the wedding and subsequent holiday. Today, the Civil Aviation Authority said phones posed a major threat to aircraft safety. But taking them from passengers as they boarded was not a solution, it said.

A spokesman said: "These phones can interfere with the aircraft systems and conversations can be heard in the pilot's headset.

"But if you put all the phones in a box, some may be timed to turn on and then you face worse problems as no one would notice," he said. " Monitoring passengers is a better solution."

British Airways said it had had very few problems with passengers using them during flights. A spokesman for mobile operator T Mobile said the idea was "ridiculous".