What happens if no one turns on airplane mode on a commercial flight?
In: Technology
Nothing really. There was some concern that cell phones might interfere with communication by the pilots but that is proven to not be an issue.
However cell towers mainly point their antenna at the ground because that is where the people tend to be. When you are flying you will be changing cell tower zones very quickly and it will be very difficult for your cell phone to talk to them, if it can reach them at all.
As a result your phone will tend to crank up its transmitter to maximum power and basically scream into the void searching for a signal, burning battery power and producing as much radio noise as allowable. Since you know it won’t work right it is best practice to turn on airplane mode so it won’t do that. Plus I suppose there is a marginal increase in the risk that if a battery problem in a phone was going to happen, thrashing it in such a manner might tend to kick it off right then.
The cell service for everyone on the ground under the aircraft would be degraded by all the passengers’ phones trying and failing to connect to cell towers at their maximum radio power and causing lots of interference.
Of course some aircraft now contain their own miniature cell tower that lets everyone’s phones operate in low radio power mode, meaning there are flights where people don’t have to use airplane mode now.
They will be a lot of people with dead phones that can’t call an Uber when they land because the phone went into high power mode and drained the battery. Some might even overheat.
There was concern that the EM from phones could screw up plane functions, usually by inadvertantly changing the signal in the wires… but those are pretty well shielded, as they are in your common ethernet or coax cable.
It’s mostly safety wanking but it does stop your phone from using a lot of battery constantly switching or searching cell towers.
the plane’s instruments could experience signal interference, potentially affecting navigation and communication. this interference is the reason why airlines require it.
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