You Don’t Need to Use Airplane Mode on Airplanes | Airplane mode hasn’t been necessary for nearly 20 years, but the myth persists.::Airplane mode hasn’t been necessary for nearly 20 years, but the myth persists.
You should still set airplane mode when airborne for other reasons besides interference with the aircraft. For one, you’ll save your battery. It takes a lot of “juice” for your device to search for cell towers that are likely out of reach. You may also want to avoid connecting to a tower outside where you have coverage. E.g. for a flight from Anchorage to Minneapolis, maybe you don’t want to connect to Canadian cell towers and potentially receive charges in another country. Obviously this depends on your plan limits. But, yeah, it’s not really about protecting the airplane, in most cases
Here is a video from TED-Ed that explains why. TLDR: phones looking for a signal broadcast on high power, but planes move so fast that you can end up right next to a cell tower so the high power signal can interfere with other phones trying to communicate.
I disagree with how he phrases a few things, but I think it’s mostly accurate.
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Most flights I’ve been on had outlets and/or USB for charging, I’ve been leaving airplane mode off for every flight for years now
Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure battery drain is about normal anyways when I don’t plug it in, the radio must eventually switch to a lower power lower search frequency at some point. Either that or the tower searching drains your battery thing is about as overblown as the leaving GPS on thing
I turn on airplane mode whenever I am already connected to wifi
I thought another reason was to avoid blasting everyone* you pass with your phone’s maximum power signal while trying to reconnect.
Edit: the problem being interference, not any health effects. I read that the effectively one-way signals from the sky worked somewhat like a jammer.
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Cell phone radiation is negligible
I don’t think even the combined power of all the phones in the plane would be enough to cause interference for anyone
The phone’s modem is not powerful enough, it takes a couple watts at most, which is tiiny compared to what a cell tower can output
If airplane mode really mattered they wouldn’t let you even have a device
The idea that plane safety is tied to everyone together agreeing to and remembering to push a button on their devices is absolutely insane. You think that the regulating bodies that require multiple backups for every possible system also just trust that every passenger pushes a button and every flight attendant actually checks every passengers devices?
No I don’t think that. What words in my comment make you think I think that
I think they were agreeing and meant “You” rhetorically.
That’s asinine. It’s like saying “If brakes really mattered, a cop would check your brakes before letting you drive to work in the morning”. Brakes are pretty damn important, but very few places (in the US at least) have any mechanism for ensuring yours are in working order even periodically.
Proper risk mitigation takes into account (at minimum) the likelihood of an event occuring, the severity of the event occurring, your willingness to tolerate a failure, and the cost associated with implementing corrections.
Airlines have an EXTREMELY low tolerance for any kind of risk that could conceivably lead to a catastrophic failure, so the fact that you’re allowed to have a device, despite potential safety concerns, comes from a combination of a few factors:
- The chances of some kind of major interference with flight ops happening are demonstrably pretty low
- People would likely push back quite hard on not being able to use electronic devices for entertainment on a flight.
- Most people comply with the request.
- Related to 3, there is little reason for airlines to change the rule, since cell operation is next to impossible in flight anyways, and wifi/bluetooth are not in the frequency range of concern.
Right, with that extremely low tolerance would come an extremely high bar of security.
For example, you can’t have lithium in the cargo, and can’t have compressed gas or knives in the cabin. And what do we see? They prohibit and screen for those things (to the best of their ability).
They wouldn’t let you have a knife if you promised to keep it in your pocket and not use it.
Therefore it is clear that, as the article states, airplane mode is not a significant factor for flight safety. Because if it were, they would lock up phones or have implemented a jammer or some other such adjustment
Risks exist on a continuum, and something not literally being forcibly banned doesn’t mean there is zero risk in that thing, just that the risk is lower than those things that are forcibly banned or that the risks can be mitigated in other ways.
Same reason you go through a metal detector to check for weapons before getting within half mile of a plane, but were left pretty much on your honor to not bring a Samsung phone with a spicy battery on board.
You know damn well I meant intolerable risk when I implied they wouldn’t allow them
I actually didn’t, which was the main reason I replied.
It’s fairly common to see people arguing as though a thing is either risky or not risky, without any sense of context.
That’s asinine. It’s like saying “If brakes really mattered, a cop would check your brakes before letting you drive to work in the morning”
This argument is also asinine. Cops aren’t in your car. If your brakes fail it isn’t their problem. Cops don’t give a fuck about your safety.
The airline crew are in your plane. If there was actually a safety risk they would absolutely do something about it because it affects them personally.
The reality is there is no safety risk which is why they don’t do anything. If safety was actually reliant on people turn on airplane mode then we’d all be fucked.
Absolutely still turn it on though, or your phone will be pushing it’s power to the max screaming for cell towers the whole flight.
But sure if you want to pop it on when you get close to landing, you can usually get a signal that low.
Not if there is a picocell on board - that’s one of the major points of the article, including the EU mandating their installing on flights in Europe to enable people to connect.
However I agree with the airlines that lobbied in the US against this. It’s going to be a source of air rage - people crammed in a small space do not want to listen to other people yapping loudly on cell phones or video calls. It’s simpler to just ban it outright. Although I am sure the airlines also don’t want to have to pay for data connections and their air staff be responsible for dealing with irate customers when the connection is out.
But airlines have already started monetising things by making WiFi available on board flights for a fee - that is already opening the door to calls. I suspect we’ll end up with it as standard and a fight against exorbitant charges for connecting imposed by airlines.
pushing its* power
You’ll have 4G and possibly 5G throughout the whole flight inside Norway. It’s not uncommon to see people browsing Netflix on their flight.
Interesting, I’ve never gotten any signal after the first 15 minutes or so inside the US.
Does the US have decent coverage? Over 85% of the land area in Norway is covered, 99,9% if we go by where people live, so you’ll have coverage even deep into fjords or mountains up here.
There are huge swaths of the US not covered. You could be driving between two cities less than an hour apart and hit dead zones.
Canada is no better. Shit my work is on the opposite side of the hill as our radio town and get fuck all for cell signal and the tower is less than 1km from me
//Should add that the mayor of our town made it impossible to rent out space on the water tower (which is at the peak of said hill) because after 2001 our town could be a target for terrorism… I’m 200km from Toronto and 45 km away from a major military air base
That’s wild. You got to be in a very remote place for that to ever happen here. Granted, there is a fair bit of competition between the three main telecom companies, and data coverage has been one of the biggest topics between them for over a decade.
the size difference helps in Norways favor too I imagine (and probably shape too!)
It’s certainly smaller than any American state, but for our population it’s fairly big. The topology of the country also isn’t very friendly to cell signals. 90+% of the country is mountainous/fjords. It’s why coverage has been a big selling point, a bunch of people live on some random mountain side in the middle of nowhere.
From what I’ve heard, there isn’t much competition in the US though, so I guess that plays a part. We got three companies independently building out their own network across the whole country.
Do you mean Norwegian?
The country, not the company. I don’t think Norwegian got 4G cell towers strapped to their airplanes
You’ll be lucky if they have seats.
So you get cell reception if you fly over Norway‽ That sounds unlikely to be true. Maybe it can happen occasionally like anywhere in the world but I highly doubt it happens often.
A private 5G network on a plane seems more likely but wifi is obviously more reasonable (Which I think all Norwegian planes have by default)
I remember once when I accidentally turned on my phone during a flight instantly the plane started to plummet out of the sky. The phone slipped out of my hands and I groped for it while people and service items flailed around the cabin as the plane tumbled. Finally I slipped out of my belt and grabbed it. With only 10,000 feet of altitude to spare, I finally managed to get the phone to go into shutdown mode by holding the power button down. The plane righted itself immediately, and I slipped the phone into my pocket quietly and kept a low profile for the rest of the flight.
I was sitting across the aisle from you and saw the whole thing unfold. To be honest, no harm no foul so you’re all good, however I’m just thankful those were the 3G days because with 5G airwaves I’m sure it would have been a faster drop.
The problem with the 5G phones is that they effect the thought waves of the pilots and put them into a deep dive trance. I can’t blame them for wearing those tinfoil hats. Modern aviation is not what they taught in flight school.
That was close, wow. I really admire your composure in zero gravity.
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It’s not only the myth, is the airplane crew reminding you of that every single flight. Both on takeoff and landing.
The mentions the reason why; it’s to reduce incidents of “air rage”. Air travel is stressful enough without having people yapping loudly into their phones.
If Airplanes were that sensitive to RF, terrorists would just be using that to down planes over major cities or during landings at airports.
Or they could just aim a directtv dish at a plane from a safe distance.
Think ya gotta scrape all that rust off first
Nah, adds flavor to the RF… Makes the airplane more likely to drool.
I disagree. I don’t see the point of having my phone waste battery searching for a cell signal. Airplane mode saves your battery.
I could just turn my phone off entirely but then I can’t listen to music.
For me it has nothing to do with aircraft safety.
Battery saver/low power mode does the same purpose for me and I can just turn off my cell signal if need be.
Aeroplane mode is incredibly, incredibly useful, I use it a lot and I’m almost never on an aeroplane haha.
It works great as a poor man’s ad blocker.
DNS blocking has the same effect but allows you to stay connected
Yeah, I have that at home but never bothered to set that up when outside the house. This just lets me do whatever while waiting at the doctors office or whatnot.
Sir?
The most amusing part is that I highly doubt any staff on a commercial flight is capable of telling if people have actually enabled airplane mode or not. It’s an honor system in a country where half of the people don’t even have the decency to try to mitigate the spread of illness.
At the end of the day, they just don’t care. If they really wanted to enforce this, there are much more effective solutions.
It’s not that they don’t try to mitigate the spread of illness, it’s that they blatantly do the opposite.
i doubt they care that much
Last flight I was on had a no electronics at all rule
A person was told they couldn’t have their kindle out during the flight
fucking hell, I’d think about leaving because having to survive the rabid child always behind me, that guy over there coughing the entire flight, that lady next to me who immediately started snoring, and the bi hourly “buy our perfume” plane wide adnnouncements would be hell without headphones
Simple. Bring a record player. Spin it by hand.
Get yourself a Wind-up Victrola
the rabid child always behind me,
The one kicking the seat got to me on my last flight.
The plan was to inform the parent I used to be infantry and I was gonna start teaching his kid some new words if his kid didnt respect the airplane. But he clued in just in time.
Name and shame the airline.
I fly a lot for work, internationally most of the time. Haven’t seen this in many years.
Air Canada - pre-covid though so that might be your many years
I flew many times with different airlines before that without this issue
Use it if instructed to because many people don’t understand what airplane mode is.
Use it if you have 2G service still enabled on your phone as there is a very low chance of 2G interfering with certain plane components due to the higher power involved, though that is extremely unlikely, there’s no benefit to leaving it on. Also, you really shouldn’t have 2G enabled on any phone since it’s commonly hijacked to send unsolicited text messages or enable man in the middle attacks, etc., and few providers use it anymore outside of some low density areas and other limited uses.
Use it if you have 5G, for now, since there is still research being done on whether the telecom industry is correct that the new C-band frequencies they’re using won’t interfere with altimeters that use close frequencies. This can especially be worrisome for low budget wireless chips that don’t regulate their frequencies to spec on mass produced models. And poorly maintained altimeters that might not be well calibrated with age. The gap is small enough that it’s possible that there might be some interference in real world situations.
So, for the average person, it’s still worth telling them to just use it. There’s no benefit to having cell service turned on during a flight. The real issue is that airplane mode should really only affect cell signals now and leave WiFi alone since planes have WiFi now and a lot of applications share between devices with WiFi, and leave Bluetooth and NFC alone since they’re short range and low power and unlikely to cause issues. Just my opinion as an IT professional with electronics and wireless communication experience, but not an airplane specialist.
The real issue is that airplane mode should really only affect cell signals now and leave WiFi alone since planes have WiFi now and a lot of applications share between devices with WiFi, and leave Bluetooth and NFC alone since they’re short range and low power and unlikely to cause issues.
I’m not sure how common it is, but my S22+ will remember if I turn bluetooth or wifi on while in airplane mode, and leave them on in the future. That’s especially nice since I use a CGM that pairs to my phone via bluetooth, so I don’t have to worry about accidentally losing that connection.
Spot on about there not being any point in having cellular service enabled. You’re 6 miles up and traveling a mile every few seconds, so you might as well just shut that radio off and save a bit of battery power.
Yeah my Pixel does the same. In airplane mode I don’t even have to turn Bluetooth on… It just keeps on working with my headphones.
You shouldn’t risk it, because no one knows how planes work.
Everyone should leave airplane mode on whenever and wherever possible.
Airplane mode isn’t for them, its for me having a quiet moment.
Airplane mode is still useful for lots of other things. I’d be pretty upset if the feature was removed.
I read this years ago and it has always worked for me: sometimes your phone goes into a state where mobile data or even calls stop working (on android at least). Not often … but it happens. I used to restart the phone, but then someone mentioned that turning airplane made on for a few seconds and then turning it off again restarts the whole mobile comms stack / services. And I can confirm that 99% of the time it fixes any 4G or 5G connectivity issues without needing a restart.
