Few days ago I was flying by plane and stewards asked us to turn our devices to Airplane Mode. But why is that?
In: Technology
Airplanes use a ton of radios for various different things. They obviously use radios to talk to air traffic control, but airplanes also use radios to avoid running in to other airplanes, to communicate via satellite to air traffic control on the ground, to broadcast their location to air traffic control, to land safely, and to tell how high they are above the ground.
Back in the 80s when cellphones were brand new, there was a bit of a concern that the radio signals from cellphones could potentially interfere with all the various radio signals that airplanes used, so it was decided that everyone who boards an airplane should turn off their cellphones. For the longest time, this was all that was needed. Cellphones didn’t do much other than make calls, so it was perfectly acceptable to turn off your phone while flying.
Then, phones got the ability to be more than just phones. You could watch movies, you could play games, you could draw, take pictures, etc. The capabilities expanded rapidly! But there was still a lingering fear that cellphones could mess with airplane radios. So, cellphone manufacturers created a switch on phones that said “Turn off all wireless communication features” so that you could still use your cellphone to watch movies, play games, use apps, etc. while you were on an airplane with nothing else to do. Your phone isn’t using radio signals? Then there’s no way it can interfere with the plane’s own radios. They called it “Airplane Mode” because that was the most common situation in which you’d want to keep using your phone without it being able to use any wireless communication systems! The name just stuck over time, and it’s become the catch-all term in technology to describe the act of turning off all wireless communications on a device!
Nowadays, even though we now know that cellphones don’t *really* interfere with the radios that airplanes use, it’s a bit redundant. Although, since your cellphone will constantly be searching for cellphone towers and you’re not likely to get a signal while in the air, using airplane mode helps to save battery when you’re flying and don’t need a connection.
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