Photo by Eefa Khalid/Dawn.com

Cell phones are annoying – all the more so because of their ubiquity. Sure, we’re all very attached to our phones and feel helpless without them but is there any good reason to be glued to the handset ALL the time?

Hold that thought while I go back to the ubiquity business I mentioned earlier. I find myself being practically assaulted by cell phones. If it’s not the cleaner at work playing that cheap Sheila song on his 2000-rupee Nokia and grinning lasciviously in the process, it’s the self important auntie on her 3G iPhone in the restaurant who must inform all and sundry that she’s had SUCH a busy week what with the partying, socialising and lawn exhibitions.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

I have told myself repeatedly that I need to be more patient, so fine, I will shut up when random people insist on having their personal conversations in public places, I will hold my peace when someone’s phone keeps beeping in the movie theatre, and I will try not to cringe when an annoying ringtone goes off in church. However, there are limits to everyone’s endurance and under no circumstances am I willing to tolerate cell phones on airplanes.

You would think that people would follow safety instructions to the letter when they’re flying at 30,000 feet in a big metal bird. But that would be the sensible thing to do and if we’re honest with ourselves, we will admit that good sense and Pakistanis have very little to do with each another.

So, as I discovered on a recent flight to Dubai, plenty of passengers (all Pakistani, mind you) decided to ignore the crew’s repeated pleas to “switch off your phone” and one particularly cheeky man even filmed the clouds with his BlackBerry, circa 30,000 feet. What he plans to do with that footage is anybody’s guess.

I wondered with disgust at what kind of person would endanger their own life, not to mention the lives of hundreds of others, all of the sake of a bit of self importance or rebellion (take your pick), until two fairly close friends admitted that they regularly leave their phones on in-flight. One of them calmly explained that he uses his cabin time to type emails on his BlackBerry! When I said that I didn’t ever want to be on a plane with him, he laughed it off saying that I was being silly and there is no proof that a cell phone has ever caused a plane crash.

To be fair he is partially correct; there are lots of independent studies on the subject and none of them contain conclusive evidence that cell phone interference has ever been responsible for an aviation disaster. However, there is no solid proof to the contrary either.

Now those who are familiar with the TV show Air Crash Investigations on National Geographic will know that it is extraordinarily difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of an air crash. It involves a great deal of time and money and it is precisely for this reason that most of aviation’s governing bodies have decided that it is not worth their while to investigate the link between cell phones and air crashes when they can simply get people to switch off their phones.

Some may say this is not the ideal situation and the industry needs to do proper research, others will say that some airlines allow cell phone usage so it really cannot be dangerous, and then you have the really mature lot of folk who say that rules are meant to be broken. These are the same people who will tell you that the reason they run a red light is because the cops are corrupt and the roads are bad and no one else follows the rules anyway. To this, my very mature response is: yeah right, whatever.

Ultimately people can come up with any number of excuses to break the rules but here’s my two cents worth of wisdom: first, is anyone really so important and indispensable that they cannot afford to switch off their phone for a few hours? If anything, it can be a liberating experience. And secondly, in the absence of industry accepted research and concrete evidence, isn’t it better to be safe than sorry? Does anyone really want to be responsible for an aviation disaster particularly when it means that they themselves could end up dead!

To my mind, switching off your cell phone on a plane is just common sense but then, what is it that they say about common sense?

Marylou Andrew writes about marketing and advertising and is an avid fan of social networks.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.