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No matter how many times some people fly, or how many times they have had it explained to them, a whole lot of people still either say they don’t know or can’t remember why airlines ask travelers to put our phones into airplane mode when they fly. If you are one of those people, or know one of those people, today you will finally have the answer.
Recently, a commercial airline pilot who doubles as a TikTok content creator (@PerchPoint) shared a video where he explains what the deal is with having to use airplane mode when we fly.
In his video, which has received over one million views and counting, the pilot assures everyone that “the plane mode button on your phone is not a conspiracy.”
However, he does admit that if you don’t put your phone into airplane mode “it’s not the end of the world. The plane will not fall out of the sky and it won’t even even mess with the systems on board” if you refuse to cooperate. Probably.
“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 for an incoming phone call, it sends out radio waves,” he explained. “There’s the potential that those radio waves can interfere with the radio waves of the headset that the pilots are using.”
He then went on to explain that when that happens, and he cited one recent example where he was waiting to receive “clearance on which way to go,” but there was a buzzing in his headset that was causing an annoying bit of interference.
“It’s definitely not the end of the world but it’s pretty annoying when you’re trying to copy down instructions and it sounds like there’s a wasp or something flying around,” he said. “So if you’re ever curious why you’ve got to put on plane mode, that’s why.”
That, and the fact that it is actually a law in the United States that passengers are required to switch their phones to airplane mode while flying.
@perchpoint The more ya know, yanno? #fyp #aviation ♬ original sound – PerchPoint