Passenger 57, Silence 0

Commercial aircraft might be the last uncharted frontier left in the mobile phone industry. Mobile usage is rising in emerging markets all over the world, but a plane in flight is the one place you still expect never to hear a phone ringing.

Flight attendants still ask passengers to turn their phones off before the plane leaves the gate, even though some airlines now allow arriving passengers to power up their phones once the plane has turned off the runway. But mostly, a commercial flight leaving the ground usually means a few hours of your life that won't be spent listening to someone else's personalized “Your Body is Wonderland” ringtone.

We have always been told that phone use isn't allowed in flight for “safety” reasons. If it has never been clear to you what that means, you're not alone. It's very difficult to find reports of any incidents in which cellular phones being used in flight have caused interference with aircraft radios, radar or other equipment, yet it's a commonly held belief that this could possibly happen. For the Federal Aviation Association, that possibility apparently has been enough to ban mobile usage in flight.

That hasn't stopped some of the rebels among us from secretly typing away on our BlackBerrys and sending messages to friends on the ground while we're stuck in holding patterns, but you generally don't see people flouting the rules to make voice calls — maybe no one wants to test a theory that might have even the slightest chance of resulting either in an “unplanned” landing, or in an FAA-administered strip search upon arrival.

However, just last month, the folks at American Airlines and Qualcomm did test the theory, as they brought officials from both companies and a gaggle of journalists onto a commercial plane at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport that was outfitted with a CDMA picocell network. The plane took off, and passengers took out their phones and started making calls, which were routed from the on-board cell site to the Globalstar satellite network and then to the terrestrial cellular network. The calls worked, and more importantly, the plane worked too. An American Airlines executive on the flight said everyday commercial usage is about two years away.

So, what makes the mobile industry suddenly eager to prove that cellular usage and flying are, in fact, a safe combination? Mobile carriers and vendors probably would not admit it, but the reason could be that someone else got there first. Boeing has begun building Wi-Fi data access into some of its newest planes as part of its Connexion By Boeing venture, and the service already is available on a few, primarily transatlantic flights. Traditional mobile players now want a piece of the opportunity by giving a lot of business travelers what they probably miss most while in the air — the chance to verbally abuse their administrative assistants.

In our hyper-productive society (Or is it just that we're hyper about not being productive?), we are figuring out ways to conquer the mobile industry's final frontier — in-flight phone usage. Maybe it sounds like a Luddite's wish at this point, but couldn't we do without the loud talking, public airing of personal hygiene discussions and all the blah, blah, blahs that are sure to result from introducing in-flight mobile phone usage? Some of us enjoy the relative silence that arrives when everyone is forced to turn off their phones — the loud jerk in 16A can only go on until the seat belt sign lights up, we patiently tell ourselves.

There certainly are other distractions — crying babies and over-amped audio headsets — but suffering through the disorientation of 100 simultaneous, one-sided conversations might be the topper. When was the last time that someone actually took the pilot's advice? You know — sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.