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.
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