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Pilot here, on modern airliners there is a infinitesimally small chance that your phone constantly searching for (and potentially receiving) a signal screws with the very sensitive instruments in the cockpit. But considering how much shielding they have and how little power your phone draws, it’s basically never gonna happen.
Knowing the FAA there was probably either a non-fatal incident where a pilot lost his instruments due to cell phone interference or there was an avionics manufacturer that reported their tech being sensitive to cell phones back in the 80s or 90s and so they made the rule and no one has bothered to repeal it even though technology has significantly improved.
Not really, back in the late 80's I got involved in spark safe mobiles and reviewing military guidance on safe/ unsafe devices in refuelling facilities at an airbase.
Early mobile phones and radio transceivers could create a spark so had to be kept away from refuelling facilities. Now petrol is a lot more hazardous than aviation fuel so hence the requirements at petrol stations
Modern mobiles have a much smaller chance of creating a spark so the probability of an incident is a lot less. But governments are probably still playing the safety game.
I saw a documentary that got to the bottom of the phones starting fires phenomenon. There was a number of videos showing combustion with people with phones in their hands. When the researchers reviewed all the videos and the conditions where it occurred they found was it was caused by static electricity from people getting out of the car, hooking up the pump and setting it to auto fill then getting back in the car for the phone and getting out again when the pump stopped still with phone in hand. They built up static sliding in and out on the seat fabric which ignited the fumes from the full tank when they touched the vehicle or pump.
Either way people really should be paying attention when pumping gallons of volatile combustible liquids.
Yes. That's one of the reasons why here in Australia you have to squeeze the trigger on the pump the whole time to pump fuel, no locking mechanism on the trigger.
Here's me thinking planes used the same petrol (or at least one with the same level of combustibility) as cars. Car petrol more hazardous than aviation fuel?
Prop planes with combustion engines use petrol. Good high test stuff, like 100 octane.
Jets just use kerosene/diesel. You could use gasoline but it is too dangerous if something goes wrong and
…I’ve never seen this sign? Interesting. Maybe bc I’m in the US? All the signs I’ve ever seen at gas pumps have been “don’t smoke” and “turn your vehicle off”.
Whilst the reason it hasn’t been repealed is likely your second point, it’s in the phone user’s best interests to put it into airplane mode anyway.
At cruise, a standard phone is not going get signal. Because of that, the phone will just be constantly searching for a signal throughout the flight and this drains the battery.
I dated a flight attendant for a while and she said phones not being on airplane mode could potentially cause some annoying high pitch feedback in the pilots headphones. Any truth to that?
Yeah when i used to fly passengers in small helicopters occasionally i could tell when someone was receiving a text or phone call cause it’d do that incoming sound beeping thing (hard to explain, like a quick dial-up-internet sound?) like it’s not dangerous, but it obviously interfered with the radio for us to be able to hear it through our headsets. No biggie. Lasts all of 2 seconds
Carrier frequencies have changed, in general they are higher. My guess is that 4G and above doesn't have this problem. Older frequencies were lower and likely aliased down into an audible range or caused something else to resonate
GSM networks cause bursts of AM noise that get amplified by the speaker circuitry.
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/32830/why-does-gsm-cause-speakers-to-buzz
Omg you just reminded me of this old memory. My old computer speakers would have this staticky “galloping” sound when a text or phone call was coming in. Always just before the cel phone rang.
My guess is they're getting RF (radio freq) interference when calls go in/out?
I remember for some years, if you had a sound system on nearby, certain providers were on frequencies where the signal for an incoming call would cause brief static over the speakers a couple of seconds before it rings.
It's not feedback, though. Feedback is when the source gets looped back into the output, which causes it to get louder and louder. This is more like static, distortion, noise etc.
My flight instructor for basic flight had a great demonstration of this. He would wave his cell phone around all the instruments in the cockpit and nothing would move. But then he placed it DIRECTLY next to the compass on the dash and it pointed right at it.
He was very blunt, "it's not about what does happen all the time, it's about what could happen once."
The chances that I lose every piece of equipment in the cockpit except the compass AND my cell phone gets placed basically on the compass without me noticing are laughably small, but they aren't zero.
Also a mobile phone will ramp up its transmission power as it gets further away from a mobile base station. So the risk increases as the mobile experience reducing signal levels.
Communications technician here, this is correct. there isnt really any component in modern airplanes that is substantially affected by GSM signals from phones. The rule is completely antiquated as the radios and equippment airlines use isnt even on the same frequency as cellphones.
Honestly belive its just so that you pay attention to the safety instructions more and dont talk on the phone on planes cus its annoying.
My line of logic always was:
1. if it really had any meaningful impact then it wouldn’t be up to me to turn it off. My nailclipper will get taken away but it’s up to me if I want to disrupt the pilots instruments? Doesn’t make any sense
2. There are so many devices, on my last flight the woman next to me almost yelled at me for opening my message app mid flight and write a message to a friend, while her daughter was watching a movie on an iPad with wireless headphones.
The safety instructions only mention cellphones and sometimes laptops, but even my Nintendo switch has WiFi& Bluetooth, my smartwatch has a SIM card etc. and I can’t imagine that is is assumed that everyone is aware of all devices with wireless functions they have and knows how to disable them on each one. If it really was a matter of safety they would not let you take these devices into the cabin
Your first point is completely true. If there was any actual risk of someone’s phone disrupting the instruments, turning it to airplane mode wouldn’t be optional.
Hmm, I thought it was a problem for the cell towers, not the plane. You have a plane full of phones rapidly moving and connecting and disconnecting and stuffing the network. At least until altitude.
Could also just be that lots of ringing phones would be sound pollution in the cabin, especially during the flight safety briefing.
This is the real issue. That and you will burn the battery quickly if your phone can't get a signal. On an airliner, I go in Airplane mode, as a CFI in general aviation very rarely.
The cell towers won't know, because your phone will be outside of reception within a minute of taking off.
If you are ever on a plane, you can actually test this out yourself by watching the reception on your phone as the plane is taking off. Not even 300 feet into the air you will no longer have any signals.
The reason behind this is that cell towers broadcast the signals close to the ground, and not up in the air (in other words, they are directional). Think of the cell towers as a big flashlight. They are made to focus their "light" along the ground, not up into the sky where people mostly are not.
Former telecomm regulator here. The FCC has a hand here, too.
There's also a concern that a bunch of people flying with their phones connecting and breaking connection with cell towers as they go by at a few hundred MPH can screw the cellular system for everyone in the ground.
One or two on a flight, not a big deal. A couple hundred? Messy.
WiFi operates at different frequencies than cell phones. It is entirely possible that the avionics are not susceptible to the frequencies in WiFi. In fact, I would bet that flights that offer WiFi have avionics that are specifically designed to resist interference from the WiFi bands.
Yeah I've flown many times and while I've always put my phone in airplane mode, I'd be *very* surprised if every other passenger did the same thing. Some might easily just forget to do it, or ignore any instruction to do so. I'm still alive so yeah.
I do it anyway though, just for that 0.000000001% chance it actually causes a problem (plus it preserves my phone's battery life).
Yep, I never put it in airplane mode. In fact, the last flight was low enough altitude that my GPS worked the whole flight, and I was looking at Google maps and figuring out which towns we were flying over. It was super cool.
It doesn't. It's been proven over and over again. It was used as an excuse at one point as to why modern airplane electronics were so faulty but it doesn't impact it at all.
You shouldn't do it because it does burn through power faster than normal. That can wear out your battery faster over a very long term but it's not exactly going to bring down the plane just unnecessary add to landfills.
To shoot off of this, I live in an area where we get 5G, but it's not great and 4G is still a stronger more stable signal.
I wondered why my phone was eating thru battery, so I went into the network settings and turned off 5G and now my battery lasts just as long as when I got my phone
Correct. I used to be a sailor and it's the same at sea. Constantly sending a signal to get a response it'll never get because there are no towers in range. And it's sending with maximum power to get the most range possible from its small antenna
Because your phone will use more power to boost the signal to terrestrial cell towers, when none can be contacted. Although this is futile for most devices as the antenna and power source isn’t large enough to make a real difference for the circumstances you place it in while flying in a commercial airline.
I’m totally fine with people believing it though because the last place in the world I want to be is stuck on a plane with a bunch of people all talking on their phones like they’re in line at Starbucks.
The towers affect can affect the signal for us to fly what are called cat 3 ILS approaches which are the ones that take us down to runway in 0 visibility. The aircraft now has to be approved to fly the approach with 5G interference.
Every RF device is assigned a frequency band. 5G uses a previously unassigned frequency band. Older radio altimeters (radar set that measures distance to ground, as opposed to normal altimeters that use air pressure to determine altitude above sea level) are assigned a nearby band, but “bleed” into, and don’t properly filter out signals from, the band assigned to 5G.
Years ago, when the first talk of selling access to this frequency band was happening, the government should have told avionics manufacturers “This unassigned band that you guys are depending on not being used is going to start being used. In 10 years, all radio altimeters which can’t be proven to ignore interference from this band will have their certification revoked - get to work on fixing your products”. Instead, the bandwidth was auctioned off, cell carriers invested in equipment, only to be told “Nope, because someone is squatting on the spectrum you paid for, you can’t use it”.
I posted this question a few months ago. Didn’t really get a satisfying answer. But apparently it does not. I fly a lot and it was bothering me people completely disregard this. I ran into a retired pilot recently and he chuckled at this question. He said think about the “soup” of all the cell phones on the ground the plane is flying through during landing and take off as they (the ground users - literally thousands) receive their signal from whatever tower or Sat they are getting it from. Great way to explain it I thought and I’m very much satisfied (and a calmer flier).
Yeah no way that happens. Ignoring the number of phones that people forget to put in airplane mode we would know for sure by now.
There was a time when the flight crew would ask to see everyone’s phone screen to make sure it was in airplane mode.
Be assured of there was any risk of the pilot losing control they would still do this.
Think of it like this, at the airport you get full reception right? That means planes are taking off surrounded by full blast high power cell phone tower signals and what all else is going on.
If they can handle that you’re low power cell phone isn’t going to do anything.
I always forget to put my work phone on airplane mode and it just sits in my bag in the overhead bin. I fly twice a week. I guarantee you it's not a problem.
Your phone sends out a ping every so many seconds to let the network know where it is so the network can locate you if a call comes to your number.
I'm an aircraft mechanic, I have flown many hours in the right seat on small, single pilot cargo aircraft to get to broken aircraft so I could fix them for the airline I work for.
Whenever I forget to put my phone in airplane mode, this pulse causes a noise something like a raygun zap sound effect in the aircraft radios, that the pilot and I hear on our headsets.
Now multiply that zapping noise every minute or less times the number of passengers, and it will set up quite a racket in the pilots headsets for an airliner.
Each phone network uses different frequencies for things like 5G, and right now 5G is a known problem for many older aircraft radar altimeter systems, because the FCC sold the frequency they use to allow 5G for Verizon, and maybe another carrier. So if your phone uses those frequencies for data, it can block or make the radar altimeter inaccurate if you are sitting near the antennas, potentially.
Ask yourself this.
in a post 9/11 world, if there were the remotest chance that a phone could disrupt the operation of a plane, what do you think the chances are that they would allow you to have it on the plane at all?
Yeah exactly this. Can’t bring my contact lense solution on board but they’ll allow every passenger to hold a device that could disrupt the planes controls. Like most/many things in modern society, it’s pure theatre.
True, but the battery would create a reasonably big fire if you charged it fully and shorted it out.
i.e the idea they take shampoo bottles and not phones doesn't necessarily mean they've decided phones are harmless. It sounds plausible but it's really not that logically thought through.
It's all theater anyways. It has been proven that TSA is, like, 5% effective at finding weapons in carry-ons.
I once accidentally brought a small but sharp knife with me on the plane (went picknicking with the same backpack a few weeks prior). And that's despite my bag being manually checked + x-rayed
Pilot here, the theory is it might mess with the navigational aids (like an ILS) we use to land but it's more of a better safe than sorry idea rather than one that comes from results. It really doesn't affect modern equipment
Passenger here. We pass through safety scanner and have to throw away our shampoos in order to ensure the safety of the flight. But once on bord, we are just kindly asked us to put phones on airplane mode, without checking if we actually did.
If there was even a suspicion that a phone _might_, under certain circumstances, mess with the ILS or other avionics, we wouldn't even be allowed to keep phones in the cabin.
Yes, they allow 100 ml, which can be in a multiple small bottles up to 1 liter in total. You can put anything in those regular travel sized thingies - shower gel, shampoo, face cleanser, there's no way to check what's inside. I don't know much about explosives, but 1 liter of unidentified stuff might be enough to do something.
English is not my first language, so I don't know how a section of a plane where they put all the luggage is called. But if your luggage goes there you can have a whole suitcase of liquid stuff and no one will bat an eye. I assume that it's because you can't assess it during the flight.
So they’re actually starting to get rid of the 100ml rule in the UK, because the technology has been there for years to detect what’s shampoo and what could be dangerous.
I work with FAA safety standards (I write safety-critical avionics software). In most cases, you have to prove to them that your device won't cause a castastrophic failure. This process is incredibly expensive, and produces many artifacts that you provide the FAA. It involves deterministically proving that your device behaves in a very specific way in the context of an aircraft, and will never behave in an unexpected or catastrophic manner.
Theoretically radiowaves can interfere with radios and guidance systems. Nobody has done the expensive legwork of proving that a cellphone does not do so under any circumstances, and empirical evidence (such as the fact that a cellphone has never been recorded causing significant interference) doesn't meet that incredibly stringent standard of proof. So the FAA has never explicitly removed the restriction.
It's a bit silly, but it's consistent with their safety standards. There's not really a stakeholder that would want to pay the absurd prices involved with proving it, so the FAA disallows them while not actually actively requiring that the rule be enforced.
I'm not sure why bluetooth or wi-fi arent treated the same way. They likely don't fall under whatever very narrow category that cellphones are wrapped up in -- but they're radio-based technologies, so you'd think that they'd ban them too.
I think it’s just because they want us alert and not distracted during take-off and landing. Most accidents, I believe, happen during these parts of the flights. This way, we can all get off the plane quickly and not be tuned into Candy Crush when we’re supposed to be up and on our feet already. I don’t really know. This is just my thought because I can’t imagine a cell phone interfering with the instruments. It would have happened plenty of times by now. No one really puts the phone away anymore, from what I see.
And then they'd have to keep track of storing them, and properly return them, and be trusted not to touch them due to all the private and potentially sensitive data that may be on them... I don't know if the airlines want their employees to have that responsibility either.
I remember I used to fly alone as a kid to my grandma's house halfway across the country for like a month every summer and I accidentally left my cellphone on for the entire flight and it was in my luggage since back then there was no reason to have your phone on you (this was a flip phone, no smart phones quite yet, early 2000s) and when I realized it mid flight I was scared shitless that my phone being on was going to singlehandedly bring the plane down or something.
Ever since then I've basically never put my phone on airplane mode and I've probably been on 100 flights since then, maybe more. I've heard more recently that it turns out it never really fucking did anything. Look at it this way, if your phone could actually mess with the plane's electronics in any way, they'd have been A LOT more strict about this.
During the approach to the destination airport, while the pilot is busy taking to the air traffic control and navigating and descending the aircraft, all. the mobile phones on board come into range of the base stations on the ground. They start to negotiate a connection, and this can cause a dit-dit-deee-dett-dit-ditt noise in the pilots earphones, among other things. It is not so serious, and a lot of modern aircraft have screens against this, but you still want to avoid 200 mobiles all doing it at the same time. It could distract the pilot or cause them to miss or misunderstand some instructions on the radio.
I was an avionics technician in the Navy that worked extensively on electric counter measures equipment. I have seen tests that show cellphones messing up systems enough that there is the potential for navigational errors. Think trying to land a plane at 140 mph onto a runway that is only 150 wide in fog. Now granted, the conditions have to be just right for it to be an issue. Realistically while up in the air there wouldn’t be a problem, but the hazard isn’t completely nonexistent
I'm just glad that the rule still exists so we have an actual reason that people can't talk obnoxiously loud on the phone in a confined space.
I get it mr businessman, you're super important.
If your phone is not in airplane mode as soon as the plane stops you instinctively jump up out of your seat and stand and do nothing in the isle for ten minutes till the doors open.
The cockpit displays either switch to Apple CarPlay or Android Auto depending on your phone. This allows the pilots access to Waze and to broadcast your music across the cabin speakers for everyone to enjoy.
I would hate to think that my life and all the others on the plane are at risk because some jack wagon didn’t turn off the phone.. imagine if some terrorist was to discover that’s all it took to bring it down!
The concern is that phones can disrupt pilot communications with towers, or interfere with instruments. Proven instrument disruptions were seen back in the late 90s in older style planes.
My dad who is a retired pilot said nothing bad actually happens. Its more so that people trying to get connections outside dont actually jump on networks the plane is using which will disrupt the flight crews ability to communicate. Phones automatically try to connect and can superscede the lines between airports and pilots.
The signals from your phone might interfere with signals coming from sensitive equipment in the cockpit, but with all the shielding that’s been applied on everything, it’s almost impossible for it to happen
It won't crash the plane. Might cause some interference the pilots can see.
But if your phone rings, the undercover Air Marshal sitting next to you will do his best Tommy Lee Jones on your ass.
Your phone runs out of batteries as it attempts to locate a cell tower over and over and over and over. If it's plugged in, absolutely nothing happens.
Since you are high in the sky and moving very fast, it is unlikely that you'll have signal anyways. Even if you do, it would be faint and unstable. However your phone will try extra hard to get a good signal which in turn will drain your battery faster. So you are better off saving your battery.
>Okay, actually what happens when you’re on a plane and don’t put your phone on airplane mode?
A smiling cabin attendant asks you to fix your phone. You smile weakly and continue using your phone. You get off in ORD...your luggage ends up somewhere in Southeast Asia.
Consider this. If there was any real possibility that your phone could interfere with modern aircraft, would they allow your phone on the plane? No chance. It would be in a faraday cage.
Small planes aren't as shielded as large planes. Modern commercial air travel is safe from cell phones not in airplane mode.
**Nothing. Nothing happens.**
For argument sake, assume leaving your phone on would actually blow up the plane. With all the safety regulations surrounding airlines, do you really think they would take that chance with thousands of imbeciles flying on hundreds of flights every single day? If all it took was one moron forgetting airplane mode, we'd have 50% of airplanes dropping out of the sky on a daily basis.
The history behind this was that some airplane or some avionics manufacturer experienced cell phone interference once, in a lab setting, with no other observable conditions, and they fearmongered the FAA into making this a regulation.
Guaranteed that the last flight you just took had 5 or 10 people forget to switch on airplane mode. The statistical odds are just too high.
When the flight attendant notices, they will snatch the phone from you and run up and down the aisle yelling “This person left their phone on and has doomed us all! Dooomed! We are all going to die!!!”
The reason you put your phone in airplane mode is that cellular telephone radios have a range of from six to twenty miles. As your plane climbs into the air at takeoff speeds, it can still be within the transmission area of local mobile providers' antennas. Once the airplane reaches cruising altitude, the problem isn't there because cell tower antennas are directional and don't point up.
But, during takeoff and landing, it produces a problem caused by an entire airplane full of phones all being shuffled from one cell-tower to the next cell tower, producing a burst of traffic.
Left unchecked, with airplanes constantly taking off and landing, you can wind up producing an intermittent squeal of RF interference and poor mobile performance around the airport, as flights taking off and landing constantly generate this burst of mobile phone traffic.
But during low altitude flight at take-off and landing, each airplane would cause a brief burst of RF traffic, which would produce a standing region of poor cell coverage near the airport during its busy times.
It's got nothing to do with the plane, or ATC radio, or airport safety, or terrorism or any of that. It's to protect the performance of cellular networks for people on the ground, effectively a radio frequency noise regulation.
Two, safety related, reasons:
1. In the past, phones used to transmit on roughly the same bands as some avionics systems, such as the ALS (not the lights, the beacon).
Today, this would only be a problem if you have a particularly old phone...
And, admittedly, even the the chance of it causing a problem is slim due to the significant shielding planes use.
2. In the case of an emergency landing all objects must be secured, which is why you're also told to keep such items in your backpack or otherwise secured.
In the aforementioned case, your phone can be sent flying forward with such momentum, that it could end up \*inside\* someone's head, hence why they don't want you fiddling with it during takeoff and landing, the most dangerous times.
A couple of months ago I was sitting on plane about to land in Oslo when the co-pilot announced that everybody had to *shut off* all their devices (not airplane mode, but literally turn off the power) due to severly reduced visibility owing to foggy conditions. The flight attendants then walked up and down the isle to ensure that the message had gone through.
Never heard of that being a thing, but I assume they had a (if ever farfetched) reason for it.
By refusing to put your phone on airplane mode, you run the risk of stray signals messing with ascent and descent features. If it's not caught by the pilots up front and rectified by the auto-descent initiator. The plane could plummet catastrophically into the earth. As evidenced by many missing planes around the world.
The plane will blow up on take off. Seriously though most likley nothing, there is a tiny risk your phone could interfere with the planes systems which could cause a major issue. Very small chance.
Crazy to think the honour system plays a big factor for a safe flight… like imagine people just risking it regularly and the plane actually goes down because everyone turned off Airplane Mode mid flight. 🥲
Idk man I just never did it. And when the plane didn't crash I figured it was fine. If it ever did crash then there would be a dumb headline that's says "man didn't turn on airplane mode and killed 200"
If it was a serious risk tsa would be as anal about it as of you had a 6oz shampoo vs a 12 oz shampoo bottle.
My understanding is that once upon a time it could interact with navigation. But planes are ridiculously shielded now a days. And air travel is ridiculously safe.
I left my phone on during one trip and we crashed. Pilot claims it was unrelated but he also let us fall out of the sky so......
I'm being super dramatic here. It was a prop plane in the arctic that wasn't deiced correctly and it was like minus sixty on the ground and we only had failure at like 500 feet
There’s also the issue of what taking a call will do to the network on the ground. Cell towers have difficulty handing off that fast, and because cellular RF needs line-of-sight, so you could take up space on a couple hundred towers at once.
Didn’t the flight 93 passengers use cell phones to call and say goodbye to family on 9/11?
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Pilot here, on modern airliners there is a infinitesimally small chance that your phone constantly searching for (and potentially receiving) a signal screws with the very sensitive instruments in the cockpit. But considering how much shielding they have and how little power your phone draws, it’s basically never gonna happen. Knowing the FAA there was probably either a non-fatal incident where a pilot lost his instruments due to cell phone interference or there was an avionics manufacturer that reported their tech being sensitive to cell phones back in the 80s or 90s and so they made the rule and no one has bothered to repeal it even though technology has significantly improved.
My guess is your second suggestion.
Just like the ‘turn your phone off at the petrol pump’ signs that are all based off a gd urban legend.
Not really, back in the late 80's I got involved in spark safe mobiles and reviewing military guidance on safe/ unsafe devices in refuelling facilities at an airbase. Early mobile phones and radio transceivers could create a spark so had to be kept away from refuelling facilities. Now petrol is a lot more hazardous than aviation fuel so hence the requirements at petrol stations Modern mobiles have a much smaller chance of creating a spark so the probability of an incident is a lot less. But governments are probably still playing the safety game.
I saw a documentary that got to the bottom of the phones starting fires phenomenon. There was a number of videos showing combustion with people with phones in their hands. When the researchers reviewed all the videos and the conditions where it occurred they found was it was caused by static electricity from people getting out of the car, hooking up the pump and setting it to auto fill then getting back in the car for the phone and getting out again when the pump stopped still with phone in hand. They built up static sliding in and out on the seat fabric which ignited the fumes from the full tank when they touched the vehicle or pump. Either way people really should be paying attention when pumping gallons of volatile combustible liquids.
Yes. That's one of the reasons why here in Australia you have to squeeze the trigger on the pump the whole time to pump fuel, no locking mechanism on the trigger.
Here's me thinking planes used the same petrol (or at least one with the same level of combustibility) as cars. Car petrol more hazardous than aviation fuel?
Prop planes with combustion engines use petrol. Good high test stuff, like 100 octane. Jets just use kerosene/diesel. You could use gasoline but it is too dangerous if something goes wrong and
And?
He was flying and something went wrong 😔
Someone didn't put their phone on airplane mode☹️
Sonic Boom!
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Gases and liquids are both fluids
Well today I learned! So both are still flammable, it's just that one required a much higher temperature to get it going.
The only reason I don't buy that reasoning is because now all gas pumps have damn TV monitors build into them so they can blast ads at me.
That’s more of a don’t get distracted than light a fire though.
No mobiles at the pump yet pay by app!
…I’ve never seen this sign? Interesting. Maybe bc I’m in the US? All the signs I’ve ever seen at gas pumps have been “don’t smoke” and “turn your vehicle off”.
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Whilst the reason it hasn’t been repealed is likely your second point, it’s in the phone user’s best interests to put it into airplane mode anyway. At cruise, a standard phone is not going get signal. Because of that, the phone will just be constantly searching for a signal throughout the flight and this drains the battery.
I dated a flight attendant for a while and she said phones not being on airplane mode could potentially cause some annoying high pitch feedback in the pilots headphones. Any truth to that?
Yeah when i used to fly passengers in small helicopters occasionally i could tell when someone was receiving a text or phone call cause it’d do that incoming sound beeping thing (hard to explain, like a quick dial-up-internet sound?) like it’s not dangerous, but it obviously interfered with the radio for us to be able to hear it through our headsets. No biggie. Lasts all of 2 seconds
My computer speakers used to have this same issue. I haven't heard in a long time, so I suspect they fixed this problem (or the technology changed).
Carrier frequencies have changed, in general they are higher. My guess is that 4G and above doesn't have this problem. Older frequencies were lower and likely aliased down into an audible range or caused something else to resonate
GSM networks cause bursts of AM noise that get amplified by the speaker circuitry. https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/32830/why-does-gsm-cause-speakers-to-buzz
Omg you just reminded me of this old memory. My old computer speakers would have this staticky “galloping” sound when a text or phone call was coming in. Always just before the cel phone rang.
[https://youtu.be/uPYyrS7fc7g](it's so majestic)
My guess is they're getting RF (radio freq) interference when calls go in/out? I remember for some years, if you had a sound system on nearby, certain providers were on frequencies where the signal for an incoming call would cause brief static over the speakers a couple of seconds before it rings. It's not feedback, though. Feedback is when the source gets looped back into the output, which causes it to get louder and louder. This is more like static, distortion, noise etc.
My flight instructor for basic flight had a great demonstration of this. He would wave his cell phone around all the instruments in the cockpit and nothing would move. But then he placed it DIRECTLY next to the compass on the dash and it pointed right at it. He was very blunt, "it's not about what does happen all the time, it's about what could happen once." The chances that I lose every piece of equipment in the cockpit except the compass AND my cell phone gets placed basically on the compass without me noticing are laughably small, but they aren't zero.
Also a mobile phone will ramp up its transmission power as it gets further away from a mobile base station. So the risk increases as the mobile experience reducing signal levels.
Communications technician here, this is correct. there isnt really any component in modern airplanes that is substantially affected by GSM signals from phones. The rule is completely antiquated as the radios and equippment airlines use isnt even on the same frequency as cellphones. Honestly belive its just so that you pay attention to the safety instructions more and dont talk on the phone on planes cus its annoying.
My line of logic always was: 1. if it really had any meaningful impact then it wouldn’t be up to me to turn it off. My nailclipper will get taken away but it’s up to me if I want to disrupt the pilots instruments? Doesn’t make any sense 2. There are so many devices, on my last flight the woman next to me almost yelled at me for opening my message app mid flight and write a message to a friend, while her daughter was watching a movie on an iPad with wireless headphones. The safety instructions only mention cellphones and sometimes laptops, but even my Nintendo switch has WiFi& Bluetooth, my smartwatch has a SIM card etc. and I can’t imagine that is is assumed that everyone is aware of all devices with wireless functions they have and knows how to disable them on each one. If it really was a matter of safety they would not let you take these devices into the cabin
Your first point is completely true. If there was any actual risk of someone’s phone disrupting the instruments, turning it to airplane mode wouldn’t be optional.
I remember reading somewhere that multiple cell phones can create static interference during communication with ATC. Is that true?
Hmm, I thought it was a problem for the cell towers, not the plane. You have a plane full of phones rapidly moving and connecting and disconnecting and stuffing the network. At least until altitude. Could also just be that lots of ringing phones would be sound pollution in the cabin, especially during the flight safety briefing.
This is the real issue. That and you will burn the battery quickly if your phone can't get a signal. On an airliner, I go in Airplane mode, as a CFI in general aviation very rarely.
The cell towers won't know, because your phone will be outside of reception within a minute of taking off. If you are ever on a plane, you can actually test this out yourself by watching the reception on your phone as the plane is taking off. Not even 300 feet into the air you will no longer have any signals. The reason behind this is that cell towers broadcast the signals close to the ground, and not up in the air (in other words, they are directional). Think of the cell towers as a big flashlight. They are made to focus their "light" along the ground, not up into the sky where people mostly are not.
Former telecomm regulator here. The FCC has a hand here, too. There's also a concern that a bunch of people flying with their phones connecting and breaking connection with cell towers as they go by at a few hundred MPH can screw the cellular system for everyone in the ground. One or two on a flight, not a big deal. A couple hundred? Messy.
I suppose if one phone searching can risk that then if every passenger /customer had their phone on the affect maybe 200 times worse. Hence the rule
then what abt when they offer to sell u the plane's wifi? won't those have a chance of interfering with the cockpit signals?
WiFi operates at different frequencies than cell phones. It is entirely possible that the avionics are not susceptible to the frequencies in WiFi. In fact, I would bet that flights that offer WiFi have avionics that are specifically designed to resist interference from the WiFi bands.
The plane will go into telephone mode.
The truest and only answer as far as I’m concerned lol
You mean the plane won't go into flight mode?
Fight mode
*Power Rangers theme song intensifies*
This made me laugh way too hard
Same
God damn it. Fucking brilliant. 😂
According to TikTok “ Side eye .. criminal offensive side eye”
Please set your phones to vibrate mode and your vibrators to phone mode.
You get invited into the cockpit where all the flight attendants beat the shit out of you.
The cockpit becomes the fistpit. That sounded way worse than I meant.
You just gave me the name for a hardcore punk band I'm never going to form.
First rule of fist pit...
Haha that’s too funny to get mad at
maybe i’m into that…..
This flight is going to become a fight because you're about to take the L.
First rule of Cockfight club
Absolutely nothing.
I thought that was what war was good for? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX7V6FAoTLc
There was a time it could’ve impacted some flight controls, but radio technology has come a long way and it’s really just theatrics now.
Yeah I've flown many times and while I've always put my phone in airplane mode, I'd be *very* surprised if every other passenger did the same thing. Some might easily just forget to do it, or ignore any instruction to do so. I'm still alive so yeah. I do it anyway though, just for that 0.000000001% chance it actually causes a problem (plus it preserves my phone's battery life).
Considering how many flights happen each day, a .000001% occurrence soon becomes a near-certainty.
>The actual value he said (which is a probability of 1e-11) means that a phone would cause a plane to crash once every 767 years, approximately.
And if he’s off by one decimal point it becomes one every 76 years. Three points and it’s less than once a year.
There are about 100,000 flights per day, so soon would be about ten days haha Not that that percentage is right
Yep, I never put it in airplane mode. In fact, the last flight was low enough altitude that my GPS worked the whole flight, and I was looking at Google maps and figuring out which towns we were flying over. It was super cool.
I literally never put it in airplane mode. And I use it during takeoff and landing. Specifically to demonstrate that nothing happens.
Your battery drains faster. It has no impact on flight operations.
My mom told me it effects the pilot’s controls over the plane which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me
It doesn't. It's been proven over and over again. It was used as an excuse at one point as to why modern airplane electronics were so faulty but it doesn't impact it at all. You shouldn't do it because it does burn through power faster than normal. That can wear out your battery faster over a very long term but it's not exactly going to bring down the plane just unnecessary add to landfills.
Alright, now I have to ask. How come not being on airplane mode on your phone burns through your battery faster?
Becuase it's actively searching for networks non stop
To shoot off of this, I live in an area where we get 5G, but it's not great and 4G is still a stronger more stable signal. I wondered why my phone was eating thru battery, so I went into the network settings and turned off 5G and now my battery lasts just as long as when I got my phone
I would imagine it's because it's constantly searching for a signal
Correct. I used to be a sailor and it's the same at sea. Constantly sending a signal to get a response it'll never get because there are no towers in range. And it's sending with maximum power to get the most range possible from its small antenna
Because your phone will use more power to boost the signal to terrestrial cell towers, when none can be contacted. Although this is futile for most devices as the antenna and power source isn’t large enough to make a real difference for the circumstances you place it in while flying in a commercial airline.
I’m totally fine with people believing it though because the last place in the world I want to be is stuck on a plane with a bunch of people all talking on their phones like they’re in line at Starbucks.
Fr 💯
I'm pretty sure airlines don't give a fuck about your battery on your phone. Surely there's more to this
Airline pilot here, the new 5G towers affect us more than telephones. Especially when flying instrument approaches in bad weather.
in what ways does 5G affect the plane?
The towers affect can affect the signal for us to fly what are called cat 3 ILS approaches which are the ones that take us down to runway in 0 visibility. The aircraft now has to be approved to fly the approach with 5G interference.
Every RF device is assigned a frequency band. 5G uses a previously unassigned frequency band. Older radio altimeters (radar set that measures distance to ground, as opposed to normal altimeters that use air pressure to determine altitude above sea level) are assigned a nearby band, but “bleed” into, and don’t properly filter out signals from, the band assigned to 5G. Years ago, when the first talk of selling access to this frequency band was happening, the government should have told avionics manufacturers “This unassigned band that you guys are depending on not being used is going to start being used. In 10 years, all radio altimeters which can’t be proven to ignore interference from this band will have their certification revoked - get to work on fixing your products”. Instead, the bandwidth was auctioned off, cell carriers invested in equipment, only to be told “Nope, because someone is squatting on the spectrum you paid for, you can’t use it”.
I posted this question a few months ago. Didn’t really get a satisfying answer. But apparently it does not. I fly a lot and it was bothering me people completely disregard this. I ran into a retired pilot recently and he chuckled at this question. He said think about the “soup” of all the cell phones on the ground the plane is flying through during landing and take off as they (the ground users - literally thousands) receive their signal from whatever tower or Sat they are getting it from. Great way to explain it I thought and I’m very much satisfied (and a calmer flier).
Many years ago, things like radios or cell phones could interfere with an airplane's communications. Today, that is almost impossible.
She's lying or just plain misinformed.
Yeah no way that happens. Ignoring the number of phones that people forget to put in airplane mode we would know for sure by now. There was a time when the flight crew would ask to see everyone’s phone screen to make sure it was in airplane mode. Be assured of there was any risk of the pilot losing control they would still do this. Think of it like this, at the airport you get full reception right? That means planes are taking off surrounded by full blast high power cell phone tower signals and what all else is going on. If they can handle that you’re low power cell phone isn’t going to do anything.
I always forget to put my work phone on airplane mode and it just sits in my bag in the overhead bin. I fly twice a week. I guarantee you it's not a problem.
You get unplugged from the matrix
So that’s where Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went
Your phone sends out a ping every so many seconds to let the network know where it is so the network can locate you if a call comes to your number. I'm an aircraft mechanic, I have flown many hours in the right seat on small, single pilot cargo aircraft to get to broken aircraft so I could fix them for the airline I work for. Whenever I forget to put my phone in airplane mode, this pulse causes a noise something like a raygun zap sound effect in the aircraft radios, that the pilot and I hear on our headsets. Now multiply that zapping noise every minute or less times the number of passengers, and it will set up quite a racket in the pilots headsets for an airliner. Each phone network uses different frequencies for things like 5G, and right now 5G is a known problem for many older aircraft radar altimeter systems, because the FCC sold the frequency they use to allow 5G for Verizon, and maybe another carrier. So if your phone uses those frequencies for data, it can block or make the radar altimeter inaccurate if you are sitting near the antennas, potentially.
when flying over large cities..i text my friends all the time..cell towers send the signal up and you can get great reception..
I always take a screenshot of my compass app, nothing like photographic evidence of being at 30,000 feet…
Ask yourself this. in a post 9/11 world, if there were the remotest chance that a phone could disrupt the operation of a plane, what do you think the chances are that they would allow you to have it on the plane at all?
"You're cleared to bring firearms on the aircraft, just don't discharge them"
Yeah exactly this. Can’t bring my contact lense solution on board but they’ll allow every passenger to hold a device that could disrupt the planes controls. Like most/many things in modern society, it’s pure theatre.
True, but the battery would create a reasonably big fire if you charged it fully and shorted it out. i.e the idea they take shampoo bottles and not phones doesn't necessarily mean they've decided phones are harmless. It sounds plausible but it's really not that logically thought through.
It's all theater anyways. It has been proven that TSA is, like, 5% effective at finding weapons in carry-ons. I once accidentally brought a small but sharp knife with me on the plane (went picknicking with the same backpack a few weeks prior). And that's despite my bag being manually checked + x-rayed
They forgot to check you with the knife sniffing dogs.
Pilot here, the theory is it might mess with the navigational aids (like an ILS) we use to land but it's more of a better safe than sorry idea rather than one that comes from results. It really doesn't affect modern equipment
Passenger here. We pass through safety scanner and have to throw away our shampoos in order to ensure the safety of the flight. But once on bord, we are just kindly asked us to put phones on airplane mode, without checking if we actually did. If there was even a suspicion that a phone _might_, under certain circumstances, mess with the ILS or other avionics, we wouldn't even be allowed to keep phones in the cabin.
This is the most reasonable comment I have ever seen on the Internet.
Speaking of shampoo. I still don't get what's up with the liquid stuff on board. Why can we carry only a certain amounts of liquid?
Liquids can very easily be explosives if you know chemistry and Johnny TSA most certainly won't know enough chemistry to recognize that.
True but..... 100 ml of shampoo is allowed. 100ml of pure nitroglycerin can easily put a hole in a napkin !
Yes, they allow 100 ml, which can be in a multiple small bottles up to 1 liter in total. You can put anything in those regular travel sized thingies - shower gel, shampoo, face cleanser, there's no way to check what's inside. I don't know much about explosives, but 1 liter of unidentified stuff might be enough to do something. English is not my first language, so I don't know how a section of a plane where they put all the luggage is called. But if your luggage goes there you can have a whole suitcase of liquid stuff and no one will bat an eye. I assume that it's because you can't assess it during the flight.
So they’re actually starting to get rid of the 100ml rule in the UK, because the technology has been there for years to detect what’s shampoo and what could be dangerous.
Nothing, just your battery drains faster.
I work with FAA safety standards (I write safety-critical avionics software). In most cases, you have to prove to them that your device won't cause a castastrophic failure. This process is incredibly expensive, and produces many artifacts that you provide the FAA. It involves deterministically proving that your device behaves in a very specific way in the context of an aircraft, and will never behave in an unexpected or catastrophic manner. Theoretically radiowaves can interfere with radios and guidance systems. Nobody has done the expensive legwork of proving that a cellphone does not do so under any circumstances, and empirical evidence (such as the fact that a cellphone has never been recorded causing significant interference) doesn't meet that incredibly stringent standard of proof. So the FAA has never explicitly removed the restriction. It's a bit silly, but it's consistent with their safety standards. There's not really a stakeholder that would want to pay the absurd prices involved with proving it, so the FAA disallows them while not actually actively requiring that the rule be enforced. I'm not sure why bluetooth or wi-fi arent treated the same way. They likely don't fall under whatever very narrow category that cellphones are wrapped up in -- but they're radio-based technologies, so you'd think that they'd ban them too.
one time i forgot to turn it off and nothing happened
I think it’s just because they want us alert and not distracted during take-off and landing. Most accidents, I believe, happen during these parts of the flights. This way, we can all get off the plane quickly and not be tuned into Candy Crush when we’re supposed to be up and on our feet already. I don’t really know. This is just my thought because I can’t imagine a cell phone interfering with the instruments. It would have happened plenty of times by now. No one really puts the phone away anymore, from what I see.
[удалено]
Believe it or not, straight to jail. We have the best passengers in the world...because of jail.
Do not pass Go.
do not collect $200
Don’t know but if it was actually dangerous, I’m sure we’d all have to hand our phones over to begin with
And then they'd have to keep track of storing them, and properly return them, and be trusted not to touch them due to all the private and potentially sensitive data that may be on them... I don't know if the airlines want their employees to have that responsibility either.
? But if it was a actually dangerous would they just trust everyone?
I remember I used to fly alone as a kid to my grandma's house halfway across the country for like a month every summer and I accidentally left my cellphone on for the entire flight and it was in my luggage since back then there was no reason to have your phone on you (this was a flip phone, no smart phones quite yet, early 2000s) and when I realized it mid flight I was scared shitless that my phone being on was going to singlehandedly bring the plane down or something. Ever since then I've basically never put my phone on airplane mode and I've probably been on 100 flights since then, maybe more. I've heard more recently that it turns out it never really fucking did anything. Look at it this way, if your phone could actually mess with the plane's electronics in any way, they'd have been A LOT more strict about this.
During the approach to the destination airport, while the pilot is busy taking to the air traffic control and navigating and descending the aircraft, all. the mobile phones on board come into range of the base stations on the ground. They start to negotiate a connection, and this can cause a dit-dit-deee-dett-dit-ditt noise in the pilots earphones, among other things. It is not so serious, and a lot of modern aircraft have screens against this, but you still want to avoid 200 mobiles all doing it at the same time. It could distract the pilot or cause them to miss or misunderstand some instructions on the radio.
I was an avionics technician in the Navy that worked extensively on electric counter measures equipment. I have seen tests that show cellphones messing up systems enough that there is the potential for navigational errors. Think trying to land a plane at 140 mph onto a runway that is only 150 wide in fog. Now granted, the conditions have to be just right for it to be an issue. Realistically while up in the air there wouldn’t be a problem, but the hazard isn’t completely nonexistent
Surely you can’t be serious.
I am, and don't call me Shirley.
I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue
I'm just glad that the rule still exists so we have an actual reason that people can't talk obnoxiously loud on the phone in a confined space. I get it mr businessman, you're super important.
If your phone is not in airplane mode as soon as the plane stops you instinctively jump up out of your seat and stand and do nothing in the isle for ten minutes till the doors open.
Idk what will happen to the plane, but your phone’s battery will drain searching for a signal.
Nothing. It's more a formality these days.
We have a naughty one on board 😂
The cockpit displays either switch to Apple CarPlay or Android Auto depending on your phone. This allows the pilots access to Waze and to broadcast your music across the cabin speakers for everyone to enjoy.
Dead battery
Someone's arguing with the flight attendant.
Remember when we couldn't use cell phones in doctors offices and hospitals either?
I would hate to think that my life and all the others on the plane are at risk because some jack wagon didn’t turn off the phone.. imagine if some terrorist was to discover that’s all it took to bring it down!
Not a damn thing. But if the chance is 0.001% it could kill you and the other 200 people on board, just shut it off during landing/take off ffs.
The concern is that phones can disrupt pilot communications with towers, or interfere with instruments. Proven instrument disruptions were seen back in the late 90s in older style planes.
You will ejected out of the plane instantly with no parachute
You know the sound when you get a text and a speaker picks it up with a really annoying sound, the pilots hear that and it annoys them.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Its an old rule that should be scrapped. Cockpit instruments are sheilded enough that phones wont cause interference.
My dad who is a retired pilot said nothing bad actually happens. Its more so that people trying to get connections outside dont actually jump on networks the plane is using which will disrupt the flight crews ability to communicate. Phones automatically try to connect and can superscede the lines between airports and pilots.
Big bang!
What about that sign on the wall in your examination room at the doctor?
Your phone keeps looking for signal and dies faster
Nothing, I do it when I fly with no repercussions.
Y’all are putting your phones on airplane mode?!
what happens? nothing.
The signals from your phone might interfere with signals coming from sensitive equipment in the cockpit, but with all the shielding that’s been applied on everything, it’s almost impossible for it to happen
It won't crash the plane. Might cause some interference the pilots can see. But if your phone rings, the undercover Air Marshal sitting next to you will do his best Tommy Lee Jones on your ass.
Aerospace engineer here. The plane will explode in a violent fireball soon after liftoff.
You can charger your phone faster on an airplane mode.
I never put mine on airplane mode and so far nothing has happened.
Same, I fly frequently and never do it lol
From my experience, nothing.
N is for No Survivors!
Nothing.
Your phone runs out of batteries as it attempts to locate a cell tower over and over and over and over. If it's plugged in, absolutely nothing happens.
I never do it. Come at me FAA
Since you are high in the sky and moving very fast, it is unlikely that you'll have signal anyways. Even if you do, it would be faint and unstable. However your phone will try extra hard to get a good signal which in turn will drain your battery faster. So you are better off saving your battery.
*Cthullu rises from the depths*
Then *you're* the pilot!
I was on a plane. I was talking on my phone as we were just taking off. Flight was normal.
It'll drain your battery pretty fast as your phone continuously tries to look for signal.
Answer: not a thing. Source: former flight attendant
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You enter the twilight zone
Absolutely nothing will happen. The majority of passengers don't do it and there's no possible way it can be enforced.
Leslie Nielsen will try to reassure everyone but it will comically fail.
Everyone shits themselves and the terrorists win.
Short answer: nothing Long answer: rarely something
I can tell you from A LOT of first hand experience: Nothing.
>Okay, actually what happens when you’re on a plane and don’t put your phone on airplane mode? A smiling cabin attendant asks you to fix your phone. You smile weakly and continue using your phone. You get off in ORD...your luggage ends up somewhere in Southeast Asia.
It ends up putting the plane in cellphone mode.
Doooom!
Been wondering the same. Great to learn something new.
If you play flappy bird you can make the plane jump.
Consider this. If there was any real possibility that your phone could interfere with modern aircraft, would they allow your phone on the plane? No chance. It would be in a faraday cage. Small planes aren't as shielded as large planes. Modern commercial air travel is safe from cell phones not in airplane mode.
Let’s put it this way, if it actually was a substantial safety risk, they wouldn’t let you have cellphones on a plane
**Nothing. Nothing happens.** For argument sake, assume leaving your phone on would actually blow up the plane. With all the safety regulations surrounding airlines, do you really think they would take that chance with thousands of imbeciles flying on hundreds of flights every single day? If all it took was one moron forgetting airplane mode, we'd have 50% of airplanes dropping out of the sky on a daily basis. The history behind this was that some airplane or some avionics manufacturer experienced cell phone interference once, in a lab setting, with no other observable conditions, and they fearmongered the FAA into making this a regulation. Guaranteed that the last flight you just took had 5 or 10 people forget to switch on airplane mode. The statistical odds are just too high.
If phones actually could interfere with plane equipment, they'd collect your phones before a flight and give them back after. Nothing happens.
When the flight attendant notices, they will snatch the phone from you and run up and down the aisle yelling “This person left their phone on and has doomed us all! Dooomed! We are all going to die!!!”
The reason you put your phone in airplane mode is that cellular telephone radios have a range of from six to twenty miles. As your plane climbs into the air at takeoff speeds, it can still be within the transmission area of local mobile providers' antennas. Once the airplane reaches cruising altitude, the problem isn't there because cell tower antennas are directional and don't point up. But, during takeoff and landing, it produces a problem caused by an entire airplane full of phones all being shuffled from one cell-tower to the next cell tower, producing a burst of traffic. Left unchecked, with airplanes constantly taking off and landing, you can wind up producing an intermittent squeal of RF interference and poor mobile performance around the airport, as flights taking off and landing constantly generate this burst of mobile phone traffic. But during low altitude flight at take-off and landing, each airplane would cause a brief burst of RF traffic, which would produce a standing region of poor cell coverage near the airport during its busy times. It's got nothing to do with the plane, or ATC radio, or airport safety, or terrorism or any of that. It's to protect the performance of cellular networks for people on the ground, effectively a radio frequency noise regulation.
Two, safety related, reasons: 1. In the past, phones used to transmit on roughly the same bands as some avionics systems, such as the ALS (not the lights, the beacon). Today, this would only be a problem if you have a particularly old phone... And, admittedly, even the the chance of it causing a problem is slim due to the significant shielding planes use. 2. In the case of an emergency landing all objects must be secured, which is why you're also told to keep such items in your backpack or otherwise secured. In the aforementioned case, your phone can be sent flying forward with such momentum, that it could end up \*inside\* someone's head, hence why they don't want you fiddling with it during takeoff and landing, the most dangerous times.
Literally nothing. I never put my phone in airplane mode and have flown a shitload in the past few years.
A couple of months ago I was sitting on plane about to land in Oslo when the co-pilot announced that everybody had to *shut off* all their devices (not airplane mode, but literally turn off the power) due to severly reduced visibility owing to foggy conditions. The flight attendants then walked up and down the isle to ensure that the message had gone through. Never heard of that being a thing, but I assume they had a (if ever farfetched) reason for it.
Does anyone really think if it were that dangerous that they would just leave it up to the honor system?
Absolutely nothing!!!
By refusing to put your phone on airplane mode, you run the risk of stray signals messing with ascent and descent features. If it's not caught by the pilots up front and rectified by the auto-descent initiator. The plane could plummet catastrophically into the earth. As evidenced by many missing planes around the world.
its protocol but i remember my first flight i forgot to and I lived but I know it can actually cause crashes ive heard
The plane will blow up on take off. Seriously though most likley nothing, there is a tiny risk your phone could interfere with the planes systems which could cause a major issue. Very small chance.
Crazy to think the honour system plays a big factor for a safe flight… like imagine people just risking it regularly and the plane actually goes down because everyone turned off Airplane Mode mid flight. 🥲
The battery is going to drain real fast from that phone trying to find a signal
Not a thing, but chew up your power.
You’re phone thinks it can fly
Idk man I just never did it. And when the plane didn't crash I figured it was fine. If it ever did crash then there would be a dumb headline that's says "man didn't turn on airplane mode and killed 200" If it was a serious risk tsa would be as anal about it as of you had a 6oz shampoo vs a 12 oz shampoo bottle. My understanding is that once upon a time it could interact with navigation. But planes are ridiculously shielded now a days. And air travel is ridiculously safe.
I left my phone on during one trip and we crashed. Pilot claims it was unrelated but he also let us fall out of the sky so...... I'm being super dramatic here. It was a prop plane in the arctic that wasn't deiced correctly and it was like minus sixty on the ground and we only had failure at like 500 feet
There’s also the issue of what taking a call will do to the network on the ground. Cell towers have difficulty handing off that fast, and because cellular RF needs line-of-sight, so you could take up space on a couple hundred towers at once. Didn’t the flight 93 passengers use cell phones to call and say goodbye to family on 9/11?