Hmm. And in the real world, it’s going the other way. I was on a flight from Charlotte, NC to Albany, NY yesterday on which the announcement was made: “Federal regulations do not recognize ‘airplane mode’, and all cellular telephones must be fully powered off and stowed in the overhead bin or under the seat in front of you for the entire duration of the flight.”
Has anyone heard of that before? I realize that the relevant Federal regulation is actually, ‘all instructions of the flight crew that claim to pertain to the safety of the aircraft must be followed without question,’ so the airline can get away with saying that Federal regulations require anything, but I’d not heard anything about this particular oddity before.
