Resident pilot 121pilot, a captain for a major U.S. airline, authors a new column on Live and Let’s Fly called Ask Your Captain. His mission: demystify the flight deck and an answer any question you may have on the topic of flying.
Q: Few people on the airplane actually put their mobile phones in airplane mode prior to takeoff. Is there any evidence that a cell phone can interfere with pilots and put the aircraft in danger?
A: No, there is no evidence that I’m aware of that cellular phones can interfere with critical aircraft systems especially on modern aircraft. The only interference I’ve ever seen was back in the 2G/3G days.
If I forgot to turn my phone off sometimes during decent when it started trying to pick up a signal you’d get clicking noise on the intercom system if the phone was near a headset cable. That being said, it has been years since I’ve heard this and I suspect newer phones are on a different frequency spectrum that doesn’t cause interference the way older ones did.
It’s also worth looking back at when the FAA started allowing electronics to stay on for the duration of the flight. The assumption would have had to been made that everyone would have their phones on and even in that worst-case scenario the aircraft could still be flown safely.
At my airline when the ban was first lifted, we had a requirement that during CAT II/III approaches we make an announcement telling everyone to turn their electronics off but even this went away after a few months.
Have a question for the captain? E-mail him at ask121pilot at yahoo dot com and you may see your question appear in a future column!
Thank you!
Plus, the rule was always an FCC rule to prevent interference with the cellular network, not an FAA rule to protect the aircraft systems.
No way cell phones can interfere with anything. Maybe old CRT screens if you hold it up to the screen. CRJ200 maybe the only aircraft left with CRTs in the passenger world.
The older 320’s and a lot of other similar age aircraft still have CRTs. That being said I’ve never seen a CRT affected by any electromagnetic interference across multiple aircraft types.
I don’t switch to airplane mode but was surprised when they requested precisely that (several times) on 1 out of 4 flights I took this past weekend on United.
I’m grateful for the rule, even if it’s unnecessary, because it keeps the loud, obnoxious morons who think everyone on the plane wants to hear their oh-so-important phone call off their phones. (It’s bad enough at the gate.)
I remember when lcd screens for PC s were new there would be interference when a call 2as coming in to a cell phone. Haven’t seen that in years though
Hmmm … back in the Before Time, I would always put my phone on airplane mode … if for no other reason than that I was asked to do so. I didn’t realize that “few of us” do so.
But I did note that sometimes I could get and receive iMessages on my iPhone even while in airplane mode. That was always a fun thing to exploit.
Fun fact: British Airways still requires electronic devices to be fully off in precision approaches. Or at least that’s what crew said on my latest flight into LHR a couple of months ago. An announcement was made, and, for good measure, FAs then went through the cabin asking each passenger individually to switch off their devices.
Follow the science! Airplane mode saves lives!