Airborne Electronics, Regulations and Preferences

Hoisted from the draft queue from 5/28/14:

I don't know why I passed on posting on this earlier, but there was an undesirable reaction from some people to the announcement by the Federal Aviation Administration that it would begin to allow a broader range of use of portable electronic devices throughout flights.

Now, at least some opponents of this development were not happy with it because they misunderstood that this rule change does not include allowing cell phone use during flights, but I wanted to respond the substance of their opposition anyway, even though it's baseless:

I would favor a regulatory change allowing cell phone use on flights if it was found that the plane's equipment and general safety of the flight were found to be unaffected. I have no problem with the actual current policy of banning cell phones because of these safety concerns; this seems justifiable in light of how asymmetrically uninformed the average consumer is compared to the airlines on the issue of dangerous wireless interference and as a straightforward matter of product safety. The consumer who flies on a commercial flight does not consent to a crash when he buys his ticket and in general lacks the information to solve this problem for himself through his market choices.

But once the safety concerns are dealt with, the only argument that remains to prohibit airborne cell phone use are appeals to how unpleasant flights would be otherwise, which is an argument about consumer preferences. I would oppose the ban of airborne cell phone use on such grounds (even though I agree with the ban's proponents on which type of flight I would rather take) because this issue seems exactly the type the market can and should handle. Consumers themselves are in the best position to know and act on their preferences, so I see no reason why any state action on this issue would lead to more of their satisfaction. In fact, the ban on airborne cell phone use likely frustrates the preferences of some, which the market could instead handle by incentivizing the provision of multiple types of services in order to satisfy all consumers' preferences.

And apart from opposing such a ban on the merits, given the terms of discourse and nature of our existing coalitions in our dispute on political economy I would hope that those left-of-center who support government action on many other issues would support market options in cases like this and do so loudly.