Cellphones in flight? This means war!

Everyone who has a misfortune to fly commercially knows, air travel today is mind-bogglingly uncomfortable. The seats are small. The flights are nearly always full to overflowing. The food is unspeakable. The air is fetid and filled with germs. Many a time I board an airliner hale and hearty only to emerge with a raging pneumonia.

But there is one saving grace. Unless you are seated behind or next to really rude people – which happens surprisingly rarely – air travel is fairly quiet. Yes, the flight attendants stand around and talk. Yes, before the plane takes off people scream into their cellphones, but along about three hours, into the flight from, say, Kennedy to LAX, it’s pretty peaceful.

That’s solely because passengers can’t use cellphones aloft. That prohibition was one of the great decisions ever. Now, in a fit of idiocy, some airlines are suggesting that they be allowed to sell the use of cellphones in the air at nominal prices. This will mean yelling and screaming and boasting and complaining for almost all the time you’re sealed in that sardine can. The government is apparently planning to allow this anarchy.

Why? Well, for a long time, cellphone use was barred because safety experts worried they had the “potential” to interfere with navigation systems or сellphones on the ground – concerns that now, apparently because of technological advances, they no longer have. (The real reason for the ban, as I am told by airline personnel in secret, is that cellphone screeching made many passengers so crazy that flight attendants feared incidents of air rage).

The ban worked well. Now, in the rush to mine every penny they can from passengers, airlines plan to jettison that old excuse and, when planes are above 10,000 feet, let people holler into their cellphones, or maybe it will be the airlines’ cellphones.

This is rank madness. It will make most of us hide by listening to deafening music. (I recommend the live concert version of “Idiot Wind” on the “Hard Rain” disc of the immortal Bob Dylan to drown out the idiot winds of the people around you). It will make us retaliate by talking into our own cellphones. It will take what could have been a bearable experience and turn it into hell.

by Philip Anderson

CNN

I. Answer the following questions:

1. Why is it so uncomfortable to fly nowadays?

2. Why can’t the passengers use their cellphones in flight?

3. Why will some companies let people holler into their phones during the flight?

4. Do you think it will be a real madness if people speak on the phones in the air?

II. Find the English equivalents of the following phrases in the text:

· ужасно неудобно

· грубые люди

· садиться на самолёт

· бортпроводники

· на высоте, в воздухе

· кричать в телефон

· достаточно спокойный, миролюбивый

· вопить, визжать, хвастаться, жаловаться

· использование телефонов запрещено

· закупоренный в консервной банке

· сводить с ума

· в погоне за каждым центом

· повальное сумасшествие

· слушать оглушающую музыку

· по номинальной стоимости

III. Read the following statements and discuss them with a partner:

1. Now the air flight is really quiet but it won’t be possible with the cellphones on board.

2. The cellphone screeching can make many passengers crazy and flight attendants fear incidents of air rage.

3. When planes are above 10,000 feet people can speak on their phones or the airlines’ phones for a certain payment.

4. Many people will hide from the cellphone madness by listening to deafening music.

Giving your opinion you may find the following expressions helpful:

By the way as for me I’d like to know

I see I’m afraid I wonder

It seems to me that I don’t know exactly If I’m not mistaken

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29