Takeoff omg

If you’ve ever wondered why airports make you go through x-rays to prove you’re not concealing weapons but then only request you to turn off your mobile device (the implication being that turned-on phones can interfere with or otherwise crash the plane/it’s all your fault) — and if you’ve ever been frustrated by how this in turn essentially implies that some group of air travel elders thinks we’re too stupid to notice or mind that some theoretically crucial safety rules are mandatory while others are voluntary (“all day, every day”) — here’s a video that won’t really fix anything but might give you something interesting (?) to talk about the next time you’re flying beside an attractive stranger.

Plus I think it’s that gray zone of murky reasoning more than people being “wedded to their devices” that makes them go a little nuts about it sometimes.

Nick Bilton looked into the issue a year or so ago for the Times (so did Jad Mouawad), and Digitizd’s David Pierce addressed the paying-attention-during-takeoff-and-landing thing a few months before that.