A pilot has shared what really happens when our phones aren’t switched to airplane mode during a flight.
Switching our phones off when attending a live performance at the theatre or watching a movie at the cinema makes sense, as disturbing the show and causing a noisy nuisance to those sitting around you isn’t exactly polite – and you might even get kicked out of the venue.
If you jet away often enough, you’re probably used to the routine of switching your electronic devices to the airplane setting, as per the crew’s key safety instructions before takeoff.
But why does it really matter when we’re travelling by plane? After all, answering a quick call or sending a text message doesn’t seem unreasonable in this setting.
You might have heard that flight mode is important to use for safety reasons and while the plane won’t exactly burst into flames if you attempt to answer a call, a pilot has warned it can cause some disruption to how smoothly the flight can begin its journey.
Taking to TikTok, the pilot issued a ‘friendly public service announcement’ to explain the necessity is ‘not a conspiracy’ – and reveal what really happens when even just a few passengers try to answer an incoming call.
If you forget to switch the mode on, he said the plane ‘will not fall out of the sky’ and it ‘won’t mess with the systems on board’, but it can cause some concerning interference with the crew’s headsets.
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He continued: “If you have an aircraft with 70, 80, 150 people on board and even three or four people’s phones start to try to make a connection to a radio tower or for an incoming phone call, it sends out radio waves.
“There’s a potential that those radio waves can interfere with the radio waves of the headset that the pilots are using.”
In one recent example, the pilot said they were preparing for takeoff from San Francisco and were receiving directions from ground control when he heard ‘this really annoying buzz going through the headset’.
This interference isn’t bad enough to halt the plane from making its journey, but it’s certainly irritating.
He said the high pitched noise ‘kind of sounds like there’s a mosquito in my ear’.
“I guess it’s not the end of the world,” he continued, “but it’s definitely pretty annoying when you’re trying to copy down instructions and it sounds like there’s just like a wasp or something flying around you.”
Reacting to the viral video, people in the comments have found the revelation surprising and have asked why the information is ‘gatekept’.
A TikTok user wrote: ‘Damn, I’ll actually start using airplane mode now,” while another said: “Why don’t they just explain this so that people know to put it on airplane mode?”
Another chimed: “Airplane mode: because distracting the pilot of the aircraft you are flying in is a very bad idea!”
