In light of this thrilling aviation story out of Ireland today, let's rethink this whole banning of the in-flight cell phone conversations, shall we? Sure, allowing for calls during that 6-hour red eye from San Francisco to Boston will bring out the jerkoff in a lot of people, but then again one of those jackasses could save your life! This was the case during a flight from Kerry to Jersey last Thursday, when a pilot lost all electrical power, radio and radar, and had to be guided in to land with nothing more than SMS and a quick-thinking air traffic controller. The plane landed safely, and the ATC is being heralded a hero, but cellphones on planes still sucks, albeit slightly less so than before. [Irish Times via Slashdot]

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