The day may finally be coming when you will be allowed to make calls on
your own cellphone from an airliner. Trouble is, so will the passengers sitting
on either side of you, and in front and in back of you, as well.
Federal regulators plan next week to begin considering rules that would end the official ban on cellphone use on commercial flights. Technical challenges and safety
questions remain. But if the ban is lifted, one of the last cocoons of relative
social silence would disappear, forcing strangers to work out the rough
etiquette of involuntary eavesdropping in a confined space.
"For some people, the idea of being able to pick up their phone is going to be liberating; for some it's going to drive them crazy," said Addison Schonland, a travel
industry consultant at the Innovation Analysis Group in La Jolla, Calif. "Can
you imagine 200 people having a conversation at once? There's going to be a big
market for noise-canceling headphones."