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Yahoo Survey Respondents Want You To Keep Quiet

Almost three in four consumers (74%) would like to see mobile phone usage on airplanes restricted to features that don't involve talking, according to a survey released on Wednesday by Yahoo.

Bruce Stewart, VP and general manager of Connected Life Americas at Yahoo, interprets the survey results as a sign that travelers want to remain connected to the Internet without having to listen to banal chatter from the passenger in the next seat. (He makes no mention of whether respondents would mind overhearing corporate secrets that could be used to make a killing in the stock market.)

Yahoo, of course, isn't a disinterested party with regard to Internet use on mobile phones. It is, by its own count, the No. 1 mobile Web destination in the U.S.

With that in mind, the respondents' aversion to public speech on airplanes seems to dovetail a bit too neatly with Yahoo's business goals. Then again, when has a company-sponsored survey ever done otherwise?

Yahoo's survey had an even more intriguing finding: Should mobile phone use be allowed in-flight, over two-thirds of those taking the survey (69%) agreed that there should be a designated area of the airplane for passengers who want to talk on their mobile phones.

Evidently, not enough people carry iPods and ear buds to drown out the noisy world.

That the survey takers "agreed" with the idea of a free speech zone on planes suggests that they didn't come up with such a brilliant proposal on their own. Perhaps the polling organization, Harris Interactive, presented them with the possibility of a chat corner without really considering the feasibility of the idea.

Anyone who has flown recently will confirm that space on airplanes isn't abundant. Try for a moment to imagine where cell yellers might be directed to congregate. By the cockpit door? Not if the air marshal has anything to say about it. In the main aisle? Nope. Callers standing beside you sound about as loud as when they're sitting beside you. And none of the airlines want to see phone-toting passengers crushed under the beverage cart. How about the galley? Again, no. The flight attendants don't want talkers underfoot. That leaves the lavatory.

Even if space were miraculously to be found (the overhead bins, perhaps?), the very idea of a talking zone is doomed to failure. Anyone who flew in the era when there were "smoking" and "no smoking" zones on airplanes should remember how well that sort of partitioning works.

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