Why does even Airplane Mode exist?

Question

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

Answer 1

From an old reply to this question:

20 years ago GPS systems were less accurate and more prone to interference, as were basic communications systems, like the radios a pilot used to speak to the ground. The technology at the time (which was 2G, I think) would cause intense blasts of static, like this: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rODbnb1_uaE](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rODbnb1_uaE) The worst case here is that: information from the ground is misheard, information from the ground isn’t heard at all, or information can’t be transmitted to/from the ground in an emergency.

There were at the time conflicting debates about which systems were affected and to what to degree. Obviously, the industry and relevant authorities wouldn’t have wanted to risk any danger to the passengers or crew, so it was easier to simply prohibit use of phones and/or enforce airplane mode rather than identify which planes had what and use different rules for different flights.

Things have now moved on technologically: the phones use a different technology (3/4/5G) as can/do the radio masts that are used to transmit calls/texts. There are even things called picocells which are miniature masts (simplifying here) about the size of a shoebox and can be used on planes to help direct that traffic and reduce interference. The issue however is the same as before: lots of variance in planes and their respective aviation electronics, in addition to the new problem of technology advancing at a pace faster than we can test for issues – in short, it’s still easier (and cheaper!) to have a catch-all rule.

With all that said, we are now technologically far enough away from the issues of 20 years ago that the risk is small enough to allow all phone use (calls/texts) on flights than can install and use these 5G mini-masts onboard. In June of this year the EU opted (or was in the process of last I checked) to legislate this as standard. To actually answer your question, unless you’re on one of these magical 5G planes, there is still some amount of risk to the systems that run the plane, even if it’s small or unlikely.

Edit: “June of this year” would have been 2023, I think. 🙂