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.
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.
You shouldn’t risk it, because no one knows how planes work.
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
I turn on airplane mode whenever I am already connected to wifi
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 thought another reason was to avoid blasting everyone you pass with your phone’s maximum power signal while trying to reconnect.
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
Microwave radiation from phones doesn’t pose any danger. The amount of energy that’s transmitted is completely negligible.
Cell phone radiation is negligible
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.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/iKYHf22qVdM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) conducted a study in 2012 that found nearly zero conclusive instances of aircraft disturbances from cell phone usage.
Now keep in mind, federal law requires you to follow the aircraft crew’s instructions, which includes turning on airplane mode.
In 2013, the FCC got a new chairman, Tom Wheeler, who wanted to shake things up by enabling phone calls and data usage on flights.
“Allowing cellphones on planes sounds like the premise of a new reality show: ‘Cage Fighting at 30,000 Feet,’ ” said Oregon Rep. Greg Walden to the Washington Post at the time.
However, regulators and airlines pressured the FCC into keeping the rule in place, out of fear that in-flight phone calls would create chaos in the sky.
Nowadays, you can get wifi on almost any flight for a small fee, allowing you to make voice calls, surf the internet, and play video games.
The original article contains 788 words, the summary contains 150 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Imagine the number of plane crashes if this wasn’t the case.
I have to assume 90% of people on board don’t put it in airplane mode anyway.
That’s my philosophy as an engineer. Create policies/rules assuming dumb people will ignore it. Anything critical should not be something the average person can even touch.
So you’re saying my genitals are critical? Why, thank you!
That’s right my king/queen. Don’t let them touch your goods without earning it.
It will be there forever since it got stuck as a “offline” button. People go offline for many reasons and they look for a “plane” icon.
Since when did you see/use a diskette or s dot matrix printer? You use their icons.
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.
If you have the Steam Deck you should be using Airplane mode. Wifi kills the battery, and as an added bonus - you can use your PC Steam Library and your Steam Deck simultaneously if one is on Airplane Mode.
I see at most a 1% difference with wifi on. It’s better but doesn’t “kill” from what I’ve seen. And not a lot of reason why it would.
Phones are a bit different (or at least used to be), as cranking up the transmitter power to try to reach towers, and other things that avoid sleep and cause extra usage really will make a big difference. Particularly higher power usage than normal when idle (i.e. screen off, etc). But for desktops/tablets/consoles, I don’t think we see the same thing. ESPECIALLY if they’re in active use.
I’d never go through a US airport without my cell phone in a faraday bag.
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.
pushing its* power
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.
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.
Do you mean Norwegian?
The country, not the company. I don’t think Norwegian got 4G cell towers strapped to their airplanes
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.
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.
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
A lot of things are annoying about flying but one of the top is when phones are ringing and beeping unanswered (or worse, answered) non-stop.
I think airplane mode is more for the sanity of the crew than anything having to do with safety any more.
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.
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.
How hard is it for someone to go without their damn phone for a flight. Probably can’t connect to towers anyways when you’re up in the air. That business deal or meeting can wait. For once in your life just do what someone else asks of you before taking off and stop bitching. Or drive or take a train.
Very odd energy.
Oh boy, who’s gonna tell this guy about in-flight WiFi?
Why would it be more acceptable to talk on your phone on a train instead of a plane?
Nope. Why would it be. In Europe there’s specific wagons where talking on the phone is allowed, so the high-flyer corporate guys can do their thing while not annoying normal people.
Yeah good plan, I’ll drive or take a plane across the ocean for my next vacation. Not every trip can be taken by land and many that can are extremely long and or slow.
Okay, heres the thing. You’re stuck in a giant tube in the sky for hours. I get people will be bored from lack of anything to do. Hell this post isn’t even about that. Its about how we keep clinging to old standards that made sense at the time that are honestly just kinda dumb now.
If I know I’ll be on a flight that’s longer than, say, 2 hours, I’ll make sure to bring enough entertainment (movies, TV games, books, downloaded internet articles, whatever) to last me the whole trip in case I can’t sleep.
Whoever is too dumb to do that should just suffer.
Back in the day airlines would charge you a premium to call from the plane.
300+ cellphones suddenly hogging an antenna as they roam by may be inconvenient for the carrier. Can you actully get reception up so high even?
If cellphones really did interfere with airplanes, there would’ve been a lot of crashes because of it, there’s always a smart ass.
Every once in a while during a flight, I’ll get an email or a text gets through after a brief connection with a tower. That or my time zone will update based on the tower is connected to.
