Tag: Airplane mode

You know the drill. You find your seat, wrestle your carry-on into the overhead bin like it’s a CrossFit challenge, and then, ding! The flight attendant reminds you to switch to airplane mode. 

So … what happens if you don’t? Are you going to crash the plane? Trigger the emergency slide midair? 

🛑 Da plane, da plane!

Let’s start with the obvious: Your phone isn’t powerful enough to take down a jetliner. Planes are built tough, with shielding and redundant systems to prevent any one gadget from causing a disaster. Your phone? Not that powerful. Sorry, Apple.

But if you and everyone else leave your phones on full blast, the radio noise from all those signals can interfere with the pilots’ communications.

It’s not dramatic. It’s just obnoxious. Think low-level buzzing and static in the pilot’s headset when they’re trying to talk to air traffic control. 

It won’t crash the plane. It might make the pilot say, “Can you repeat that?” to air traffic control, which, y’know, isn’t ideal when they’re, oh, coordinating more than a few 900,000-pound hunks of metal going 500 mph across an invisible highway in the sky.

🛩️ It’s not the paint job

This interference is more likely on planes with older electronics, typically ones built before 2005. Some older aircraft have had systems upgraded though. It’s not about the plane’s birthday, it’s about what’s under the hood.

That’s why the rule is still around: It’s easier to just have everyone use airplane mode than risk messing with cockpit comms on the one plane with vintage wiring.

📶 No bars anyway

At 35,000 feet, your phone is desperately pinging towers it flew past five minutes ago. It won’t connect. All it does is kill your battery and waste your time.

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