Silence aloft is under threat as regulators, airlines push for gadgets

But Green’s no-obligation oasis may soon disappear. Federal regulators are reassessing the rules barring phones in the air even as some international airlines are gradually introducing Internet access to their planes. And two European carriers — TAP Air Portugal and BMI, a British company — said recently they would become the first to proceed with cellphone service, in three-month trials on flights within Europe next year.

Of the thousands of comments the federal government has received on the issue, many focused on the fear of being stuck next to someone jabbering away. But a different concern has emerged: the dread of hearing one’s own voice on the phone.

Some business travelers, the bread-and-butter customers of airlines, say they privately relish the digital downtime at 35,000 feet. Managers who are at the constant beck and call of electronic devices while tethered to the ground, say they have come to think of the plane cabin as a place to nap, think or even work — but in a focused way that precludes easy interruption or multitasking.

Forget the cone of silence. Many have come to cherish the airplane as the long metal tube of silence.

Once cellphones and BlackBerries are allowed to breach that silence, the solution may not be so simple as keeping the devices turned off, since business associates and bosses will expect to be able to get in touch. Travelers say the no-phone policy has saved them from their own compulsions. “My hope,” Green said, “is that in-flight cell service is either so patchy or so expensive as to give me an excuse not to deal.”

James E. Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University, said the emerging debate over whether to allow phone use on planes is taking on a larger symbolism. Airplanes, he said, have become the last place where people in business do not feel obliged to be constantly and immediately available. Perhaps counterintuitively, Katz said, airplane travel has become for many people a highly productive time, either because it permits uninterrupted work, or simply a reflective time that has been lost in a world of 24/7 digital stimulation. “We’ve created a world where if you don’t get back to somebody immediately, you’re suggesting they’re not important,” he said. “People love having the enforced tranquillity.”

How to provide phone access on airplanes is a debate with many participants. An advisory committee of the Federal Aviation Administration is looking at whether cellphone use interferes with aircraft equipment. The Federal Communications Commission is studying whether transmissions from planes could interfere with cellphones on the ground. — NYT