kindles, airborne.

apparently they now have kindle mounts for pilots

Taxi, take-offs, and landings. Those are pretty much the only time I spend on flights where the skymall magazine is ever relevant for me (skymall offers no good deals, ever). Well, relevant is a loosely applied term. Those are the only times when I ever flip open the pages of skymall. This is in part because of the FAA rule that bans electronics from the first and last 10 minutes of flights where you're taking off and landing. Oh, taxiing too. For some odd reason, it's believed that electronics can mess with the navigation system of an airplane. Personally I think it's a bit hoky to think that an ipod purchased from best buy could flummox a state-of-the-art avionics system on an airplane.

Well, now it looks like there's going to be some give on that policy. Recently, the FAA has allowed the use of ipads in the cockpit, as airlines are putting all flight manuals on ipads to save space in the cockpit. The NYT reports that the FAA is taking the initiative to look into relaxing the rule and allowing ipads and kindles for passengers to use. Of course, this will take some time, as apparently they have to actually test each individual device separately on a plane with no people, which could be kind of a waste of gas (although being able to bust this myth would be nice).

So, hopefully within the next few years, we'd have the option to listen to music while we peer out the window or read something other than skymall (if we're in the aisle seat). Hmm, maybe by the time this rule is relaxed, we'd be on the ipad 6 where you can track your plane's progress live while using the in-flight app on the airplane's free (yea right) wifi. Or maybe by then they'll have developed a system where it remotely controls our  approved electronics devices so that we'll only have the option of perusing the skymall magazine on kindles and ipads during taxi, take-offs, and landings.

Sadly, the second option seems more likely.