What happens if no one turns on airplane mode on a full commercial flight?
In: 1256
Pilot here. There are three main impacts.
1. Cellular overcrowding (FCC) If everyone has their cellphones on they will all get within range of cell towers at roughly the same time. Additionally they will hop between towers at roughly the same speed. Potentially overcrowding towers successively.
2. ILS interference
An ILS is a ground based system that we use to land in bad weather that operates on similar frequencies to cellular. Looking at safety reporting there is around 80-100 reports (edit: per year) from pilots of interference causing a go-around. After telling everyone to switch their phones to airplane mode there is no interference on the 2nd attempt.
Personally when I fly with bad weather I make a special note of asking pax to turn off their phones.
Also I have first hand had 5g interference to my radio altimeter 8-10 times.
3. 5G-C Band interference with Radio Altimeters.
Can post sources later. Have to go fly
Edit:
Also, the fleet I’m on just got hit with an emergency Airworthiness directive a couple of months ago prohibiting use of autothrottles for landing due to the 5G-C band specifically. (Not Boeing).
Other commenters have pointed out that there are now filters in effect to mitigate the interference and most(?) affected approaches have be reopened.
For the people around interested in going down a rabbit hole; I dug out one of the original airworthiness directives related to 5G for Boeing Aircraft. Numbers and graphs showing interference can be found farther down around page 9.
https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2023-13155.pdf
Edit 2: Fascinating read from u/deckardmb with some testing done by Boeing.
https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_10/interfere_textonly.html
Edit 3: link from the last time we discussed this question. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/aFZrFtBaIc
Funniest comment:
“And he’s wrong, like pilots usually are”
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