Are you phoning it in when a flight attendant orders you to switch your cell to airplane mode?
Airline workers have long ordered fliers to switch off their cellular devices, saying failure to do so could cause trouble during take-off.
But what actually happens if you refuse — or simply forget — to do so?
“Not a darn thing,” Gary Coxe, a pilot and flight instructor with 7,000 flight hours, told Travel + Leisure.
However, most experts admit that even if it’s not that grim of an outcome, it’s highly suggested to turn on airplane mode out of consideration.
“No, your plane won’t fall out of the sky, and it won’t even mess with the systems on board. However, it does have the potential to mess with the headsets,” a pilot and U.S. Army veteran explained on TikTok, where he is known as PerchPoint.
He explained in the video, which has racked up 1.2 million views, that if even three of four people on a Boeing 737 have their phones trying to make a connection to a radio tower for an incoming call, it sends out radio waves that could potentially interfere with the radio waves of the pilots’ headsets.
“It’s not the end of the world, but it’s definitely pretty annoying,” he concluded.
Pilots rely on intel they get from the control tower through their headsets due to their limited visibility, particularly during take-off and landing, when most aviation-related accidents tend to occur.
As PerchPoint explained, while they can still hear instructions through the headsets if radio towers are interfering, there will be a buzzing noise that could make the audio not as clear.
The Federal Aviation Administration told Travel +Leisure that the use of cell phones and personal electronics are allowed only if it doesn’t affect safety or communication systems.
However, the spokesperson for the organization declined to share whether or not they are aware of any times when a phone not in airplane mode was the cause of an accident.
The FAA’s rules come from insight from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which banned all in-flight cell phone use in 1991 due to the confirmation that cell phone signals could interfere with “critical aircraft instruments.”
In 2013, the FCC took another look at the issue and noted that technological advancements now meant that flyers could use their phones — if they’re in airplane mode.
The FCC found that “technology that can be installed directly on an airplane is now available to prevent such interference and has already been deployed successfully in many other countries around the world without incident.”
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