What Happens if You Don’t Switch your Smartphone to Airplane Mode During Flight

Do you know what happens if you don’t switch your Smartphone to airplane mode during Flight? Switch the smartphone to Airplane mode during ‘flight.….not when a creepy stalker is annoying you.

We all have travelled by air; some even travel too frequently to even lend the ears to the pre-flight instructions (though they never miss the chance to notice the demonstrations given by the flight attendants). Among the various instructions, one remain the ‘switching the smartphones to flight mode or airplane mode’. But obviously, people are so busy now-a-days, (or at least they pretend to) that they can’t put aside their smartphones for some hours also.

They just feel it is unnecessary to switch to airplane mode during flight, as it won’t risk the life of the people on the plane; moreover almost everyone is using their cellphones, then why shouldn’t I? (Yes this mentality works most of the time.) In an average almost 50,000 – 80,000 planes flight per day worldwide, carrying millions of people. And all these people think in this way!

But have we ever thought, what does actually happen, when the smartphones are not being switched to the flight mode? The signal from the smartphone messes with the navigation system in the cockpit. Just like we get notice (that unpleasant sound) from the television and radio sets, whenever the phone is kept near these devices, pilots also get the interference on their headphones when they talk to ATC (Air Traffic Controller). So it basically annoys and distracts them and therefore can be a hazardous.

Another reason is, when we are flying the signal of the cellphone, bounces off multiple towers and sends out a stronger signal. And this might congest the networks on the ground. Therefore it is advisable to switch to flight mode, so that it disables the cellular (where the device will stop communicating with cell towers and it won’t send or receive anything that depends on cellular data, like voice calls and SMS messages to mobile data), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS. Moreover using the cellphones while on flight can drain the battery very fast.

Though for these reasons, no plane is ever going to crash, it’s still better to be safe than sorry. The check-ins on social networking sites would definitely fetch numerous likes and comments, but they can wait till you land on the ground.
Have a safe flight. J