Fasten your seatbelt, and make sure your seat is upright, your tray table is stowed and your devices are in airplane mode. It’s one of the most familiar pre-flight instructions in modern air travel, and yet, as it turns out, the airplane mode rule may not be quite as cut-and-dried as passengers have been led to believe.
Last month, a Threads user posed the following question: “Airplane mode isn’t about ‘the plane will crash.’ It’s about your phone going feral at 800 km/h. It keeps hunting towers nonstop, blasting signals and draining battery. One phone is nothing. A cabin full of phones can create that annoying headset interference pilots hate. So yeah, I turn it on the second I sit down. Be honest: have you ever left airplane mode off on a flight?”
Somewhat surprisingly, the lion’s share of respondents claimed to be steadfast rule followers. Even more surprising? The ones who admitted to skipping airplane mode altogether were pilots.
“Nah,” one replied. “I’ve heard cellphone interruptions over the radio, but not for a loooong time. Like more than a decade ago. I never put my phone in airplane mode.”
“Wrong. [Flight attendants] announce it because it’s part of the script, but they don’t even care anymore,” another chimed in.
So…do we, or don’t we?
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Well, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, the answer is still yes. Passengers are required to put their phones on airplane mode for the duration of a flight, as signals could theoretically interfere with critical aircraft instruments. According to an electrical aerospace engineer in the thread, though, the actual risk is fairly slim.
“I used to do equipment certification for aircraft,” he wrote. “The only time flight mode really matters is during takeoff and landing. There’s a small potential for the [radio frequency] signals to cause interference with navigation and communication equipment. Small! During flight, your phone will hunt for signals constantly, never find them and flatten the battery. No impact on flight operations.”
Still, even if the risk is minimal and the consequences unlikely to be dire, some argue it’s simply a matter of courtesy. The interference can be audible in pilots’ headsets, producing the same buzzing sound you hear when a phone sits too close to wired speakers. Dangerous? Not particularly. Annoying? Absolutely.
Ultimately, though, whether the risk is tiny or nonexistent isn’t really the point. The FAA still says to turn airplane mode on, and most airlines still expect passengers to follow that rule. With most aircraft now offering wifi, there’s little practical reason not to switch airplane mode on anyway. It may be fun to debate online, but at 35,000 feet, it’s probably easiest to just follow the script.
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