An engineer’s check resulting in the systems being OK does not negate the possibility that there were no gremlins in the system.

That’s probably a fairly remote probability, but certainly no more remote than the event being caused by a cell phone signal.

One might refer to Occam’s razor in a case like this – “where there are two or more possible explanations, the simplest one is probably the right one”. So I’m not disagreeing with Airlines’ polcies of banning cells per se, it just ticks me off that they are so matter of fact about it.

If the ban on cells were explained to passengers reasonably, in the context of the above, I believe more passengers would be willing to comply. It just smacks of the situation we had a few years ago where “there is no such thing as DVT from airline seats” which following the media’s interest was transformed into a policy of “we recommend for your comfort…blah blah blah”, ie. a reluctance to be entirely honest with passengers.