It really is a mess, and it isn’t helped by the technocluelessness of airline personnel. You’re supposed to “turn off” your phone (whatever that means), but you can fire up your laptop in the air. It has Bluetooth and a wireless widget that are almost certainly emitting, unless one is diligent enough to disable them. How many do that? I rarely do. I think that, like what happens before you board the plane at the airport, it is just more security theater, and has nothing to do with actual flight safety.
I wonder if one airline came up with smart policy, it would provide them with a competitive advantage that would force the rest of the industry to follow?
For the record, I have a vivid memory of sitting in a meeting with Peter in LA at a meeting on the subject in conjunction with a Space Frontier Foundation meeting around 1994-1995, and when he said that he had been talking to businessmen in St. Louis, I suggested that he suggest to them that the theme should be the “New Spirit Of St. Louis,” in memoriam to Lindbergh.
I’m not claiming that I came up with it first, or that someone else didn’t suggest it to him or them earlier, or that he didn’t come up with it prior — there’s no way to know that, unless Peter has something to say. But I recall it vividly.