Timeline for Why don't airlines install Faraday cages in their planes?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 6, 2017 at 7:20 | comment | added | MSalters | The holes in Faraday cages don't block "specific frequencies, allowing all others through". They block wavelengths greater than the hole sizes, thus all frequencies below the threshold. IOW, they form a high-pass filter, not a notch filter. But the wavelength of WiFi is down to a few centimeter. | |
| Oct 4, 2017 at 9:38 | comment | added | Romeo_4808N | An aluminum airframe is basically a Faraday Cage, which is why metal aircraft are frequently struck by lightning and survive with little or no damage to the airframe or systems. | |
| Oct 4, 2017 at 7:11 | answer | added | Hobbes | timeline score: 4 | |
| Oct 2, 2017 at 22:00 | comment | added | mins | Material used on Boeing planes when the fuselage and nacelles are built from carbon fiber instead of aluminum. The shielding is already there. Without this electromagnetic protection we would have serious problems with lightning strikes in flight. | |
| Oct 2, 2017 at 21:19 | comment | added | Pondlife | Welcome to aviation.SE! I think @mins means, why would you want a Faraday cage in an aircraft in the first place? We have a lot of "why don't..." questions on this site, and the answer is inevitably some variation on "too heavy/expensive/inconvenient compared to the benefit". We've already established that using phones on board is not a serious aviation issue (at least in the US), so it isn't clear what problem you think this would solve. | |
| Oct 2, 2017 at 21:18 | answer | added | Jan Hudec | timeline score: 6 | |
| Oct 2, 2017 at 20:47 | comment | added | DonielF | @Sanchises Not necessarily. Treated glass can be a Faraday shield - see the pictures in the linked Wikipedia article. | |
| Oct 2, 2017 at 20:46 | comment | added | DonielF | @mins I’m not sure I understand. | |
| Oct 2, 2017 at 20:36 | comment | added | Sophie Swett | An airplane cabin already has something like a Faraday cage around it: the fuselage skin. I wonder if radio interference from electronics is blocked by the skin and thus escapes through the windows? Making the cabin into a full Faraday cage would probably mean putting wire mesh over all the windows. | |
| Oct 2, 2017 at 20:24 | review | First posts | |||
| Oct 2, 2017 at 20:34 | |||||
| Oct 2, 2017 at 20:24 | comment | added | DonielF | Cross-posted from Travel.SE. | |
| Oct 2, 2017 at 20:23 | history | asked | DonielF | CC BY-SA 3.0 |