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9 Sep 2011

September 9th, 2:16am 0 comments

Do you need to turn off your mobile on a flight?

The vast majority of airplane crashes (or near-accidents), as well as most of the jolts and bumps, occur when they intend to start or land. They want to be able to get your attention quickly in an emergency ("do this, do that, brace for impact"), and if you're zoned out with music or something you may not hear their calls. However, saying "due to the risk of violent fiery death, please give your full attention to any slight noises the aircraft may make during takeoff and landing" isn't the best way to retain customers.

Laptops and other heavy items make excellent projectiles should there be some heavy turbulence or just a rough landing, and they don't want those out for that reason.
Flight attendants often know this is the actual reason for those instructions, but generally pretend not to.

The thing about switching off mobile phones is (or at least was) on request from the cellular network operators. In the good ol' days of networks like NMT an airborne phone would be "heard" by multiple cell towers, occupying some kind of capacity on each of them*. Modern networks have such short range and don't use "channels" in the same way so it's no longer any kind of problem. No aircraft that could in any way be affected by something like a mobile phone would ever be allowed to fly.

Thanks @jstck for the knowledge