You Don’t Need to Use Airplane Mode on Airplanes | Airplane mode hasn't been necessary for nearly 20 years, but the myth persists.

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 120 points – You Don’t Need to Use Airplane Mode on Airplanes
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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.

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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.

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.

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?

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.

https://youtu.be/iKYHf22qVdM

I disagree with how he phrases a few things, but I think it's mostly accurate.

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.

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.

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

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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.

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.

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

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:

  1. The chances of some kind of major interference with flight ops happening are demonstrably pretty low
  2. People would likely push back quite hard on not being able to use electronic devices for entertainment on a flight.
  3. Most people comply with the request.
  4. 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

i doubt they care that much

Airplane mode isn't for them, its for me having a quiet moment.

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 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 a dot matrix printer? You use their icons.

To be fair, printers today come in all shapes and sizes and don't necessarily look that different from the icons I see.

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.

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.

I make it a point to play around with my phone during take off

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.

Believe it or not Vodafone will charge you for air and sea usage quite a lot. So be careful if you use them.

I’ve definitely gotten text messages at 35k feet on plenty of different occasions. Not a single issue with any systems on the plane from it.

Aeroplane mode is incredibly, incredibly useful, I use it a lot and I'm almost never on an aeroplane haha.

Everyone should leave airplane mode on whenever and wherever possible.

I use it ho properly disconnect from mobile network, if something not working with it on iPhone, disabling and enable mobile network did not do the trick, don’t know exactly why.

I use it ho properly disconnect from mobile network, if something not working with it on iPhone, disabling and enable mobile network did not do the trick, don’t know exactly why.

Because the cellular tower icon disables mobile data, but not the radios. You can tell because when you turn it off you’ll still see bars (if, you know, the radio is working).

Airplane mode on iOS disables cellular radios, but leaves WiFi and Bluetooth on. Your phone will sit there blazing (figuratively) as bright as the sun in its cellular radio spectrums trying to hit a tower when you’re 35,000 feet up, eating up your battery and potentially fucking with cell towers as you fly overhead, where WiFi and Bluetooth won’t. It also prevents potential interference from the 2G radio with the ILS the plane uses for landing (as I saw elsewhere from a pilot).

The people who can decide whether to throw you off the plane are telling you that you have to put it in airplane mode. Seems fucked up that they would be basing that on a myth, but regardless, I want to stay on the plane.

It's because the airline tells them they have to require it, and it's critical not to deviate from policy when it comes to safety. The airline is being told to require it by their governing authority, who updates rules and regulations at the speed of bureaucracy and an air of "but did you die, tho?".

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.

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.

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.

Why would it be more acceptable to talk on your phone on a train instead of a plane?