By host Tom Ashbrook:

Attention all air travelers. Heads up. The leg room is lousy, the meals are gone, on-time arrival feels like an oxymoron and now this: a major move is afoot to unleash non-stop cell phone use on passenger airplanes in mid-flight. Cell phone use free-for-all at 30,000 feet.

New technologies may soon skirt the safety issues that have kept cell phones on the in-flight forbidden list. Cell phone companies want it. Airlines are leaning there. The FAA looks ready to sign off.

But most fliers hate the idea. Four hundred ring tones, four hundred bellowing conversations — in your captive ear for hours.

Hear about cell phone use on airplanes ready for take-off.

Guests:

Alexandra Marks, senior national correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor

Tom McDaniel, president of the Tranport Workers Union Local 556 represents 8500 flight attendants at SouthWest Airlines

Paul Levinson,
Chair and professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, author of “Cellphone: The Story of the World’s Most Mobile Medium and How It Has Transformed Everything”

Randy Peterson, editor and publisher of Inside Flyer magazine

Susan Gurley, Executive Director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives

David Coiley, Director Aeromobile Strategic Relationships and Marking ARINC Inc

Christine Rosen, senior editor at The New Atlantis