[By Duncan McLeod]

The rules airlines impose on the use of electronic gadgetry on their aircraft are incoherent and in many cases downright silly. It is time the industry applied consistent guidelines on the use of cellphones, e-readers and tablets on their flights.

I’ve been travelling extensively around the country in recent weeks using a range of airlines, from SA Airways (SAA) to Kulula. As a heavy user of computers and portable gadgets in my job, I’ve been subject to the most diverse and bizarre range of policies regarding their use on board aeroplanes.

On a recent Kulula flight to Cape Town, I read a novel on my Amazon.com Kindle e-book reader during both take-off and landing. The cabin attendants were quite happy about me using it — at least I assume they were: they saw me using it and made no request to me to switch it off.

Then, a few days later — on an SAA flight to East London — a burly attendant reprimanded me loudly for not switching off the Kindle after the plane had commenced its descent into the Eastern Cape city. This was despite the fact that the reader does not include a 3G aerial and the Wi-Fi was switched off. I duly switched the device off.

But the same airline had no issue with me using a 3G-enabled iPad during another flight. The 3G antenna was not switched on, but the airline had no way of knowing that and didn’t once question me about it.

Yet all the local airlines are vociferous about not allowing cellphones, even in “flight mode”, where all radio communications are turned off.

So, they have no issue with their customers using 3G-enabled tablet computers — and laptops — but perish the thought of keeping your phone on in flight mode. It’s inconsistent and makes no sense.

The same woolly thinking applies to iPods and other music players. Some airlines insist that these devices — even the iPod Classic, which has no radio communications ability — be switched off during take-off and landing.

Others, like Kulula, don’t seem to care. The airline had no problem with me listening to tunes, even during take-off and landing.

The situation gets even more ludicrous. I have colleagues — I’m not mentioning names — who put wireless 3G routers like the popular Mi-Fi devices in the overhead luggage compartments and use the wireless hotspots these create to surf the Web on their tablets and notebooks during flights. For what it’s worth, they tell me they can get reception for a good time after take-off and before landing. To my knowledge, they haven’t crashed any planes yet.

Some airlines are now talking about introducing in-flight Wi-Fi. Internet service provider WirelessG is piloting the system with SAA’s low-cost airline Mango. It’s still subject to final approval from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) but it’s proof, if it were needed, that wireless systems don’t interfere dangerously with the avionics systems on aircraft.

Airlines across the world have started offering Wi-Fi on board and so far they haven’t sent any planes plummeting into the ocean.

I do have sympathy for the airlines. They are subject to strict rules imposed by the CAA — which moves at a snail’s pace on these issues — regarding the use of wireless gadgets on their aircraft.

To be fair, the authority is right to be sensitive about safety, but it’s being far too slow in keeping up with developments in personal technology.

An aircraft is the ideal location for busy people to get online and catch up with work. Airline regulators need to move much quicker to develop new guidelines. At the very least, airlines need to impose consistent rules on the use of modern technology on their flights.