What happens if you don’t put your phone in airplane mode? - Lindsay DeMarchi

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Right now, invisible signals are flying through the air all around you. Massive radio waves carry information between computers, GPS systems, cell phones, and more. And the sky is flooded with interference from routers, satellites, and, of course, people flying who haven’t put their phones on airplane mode. So, what exactly does airplane mode do? Lindsay DeMarchi explains the setting's importance.

Lesson by Lindsay DeMarchi, directed by Sofia Pashaei.

This video made possible in collaboration with Brilliant

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To be honest, I think telling people that it's not about their safety but being basically just nice to random other people...will probably lead to 50% less people turning on air plane mode.

Willensimperium
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My wireless communications professor explained this exact same thing to us many years ago! He said that the reason we are asked to put our phone on airplane mode is not because it will interfere with the airplane's communications but rather our phones will overwhelm and potentially take down the entire cellular network on ground because they will suddenly see so many cell towers in clear line of sight at take off (as there will be no obstructions) and bombard the network with so much signals that it can get overwhelmed. This makes sense because airplanes use a much lower frequency to communicate with the control towers, somewhere in the low 100 MHz range whereas cell signals are in GHz range.

I guess it's easier to scare people into thinking that using the cellphones can harm the flight they are taking rather than make it difficult for people on the ground to call each other. This is the biggest lie that is told to passengers it's hilarious!

litetaker
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In radio astronomy, NOTHING is more annoying than someone forgetting to turn their phone off around the telescope and then us basically getting the signal version of gibberish. 😂
It was so cool to see a video discuss about the effects on astronomy though. It is rarely talked about, especially in the radio spectrum.

sohinidutta
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I always thought that if cellphones are truly dangerous for planes, they would be banned from the cabin outright. Aviation take safety seriously, and I don’t think they’ll risk a plane’s safety on the willingness of passengers to be inconvenienced.

musthaf
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My friend who is a private pilot told me that putting my phone on airplane mode was simply because above 3000 ft, I wouldn't be getting any service and my phone's battery would just drain really quick as it spends the length of our flights searching for a signal since our little Cessna 182 didn't have a wifi signal built in for my phone to link to.

LowgaenSchmidt
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I love how you connected this story to astronomy and science. Very important that people understand.

jelmermulder
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I think it'd be important to note that this was *not* the only (or at least original) effect of phones / airplane mode (and I'd imagine it came about due to interference with equipment and those stations, not cell towers and their stations on the ground) and it does/did actually inconvenience the pilot as well--or at least it used to. I think most of the systems that rely directly or indirectly on those specific radio waves have been phased out in favor of GPS in most cases or use different wavelengths, etc. There was a point where the wavelength used by phones and the equipment on planes (I think it was specifically older ADFs) were the same. I'm a pilot by the way so I'm pretty sure I'm not bullshitting, it's just not really a problem anymore.

x
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As an airline pilot, I can 100% tell you that the interference from multiple cell phones buzzing in my headset is indeed loud and can be quite annoying whilst talking to ATC. So think about whether or not you want your pilot to be annoyed and/or distracted while he or she is flying you to your destination in possibly challenging conditions. I can't just take off my headset to make your noise stop. Leaving your phone on does not benefit you or me. When I hear that buzzing I always hope for the phones in question to have dead batteries upon landing.

kellicos
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So what I'm hearing is airplane mode won't turn your phone into a plane...

Raskoll
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This isn't how any of modern wireless telecommunications work. Phones don't transmit unless they are told they can transmit. The first step of this process is attachment. Frequencies haven't been dedicated to a particular phone since the original cellular network called AMPS developed in the 1980s. The original reason for airplane mode is that phones trying to register would transmit in a way that many cell towers would hear the registration request, and the CPUs of the 1980s weren't fast enough to handle all the registration requests from the same phone. It was only a problem during the low altitude parts of the flight of a jet, but civil aviation flys at the altitudes for most of their flight, as opposed to commercial her traffic which rapidly leaves those attitudes during takeoff.

In Europe, they actually put a wireless transmitter in airplanes, allowing wireless phones to work in the air. As they are so close to the phone, transmission power levels are very small.

If you are going to give a talk about airplane mode, you need to at least research wireless protocols of 4G or higher, as no one in the developed world uses 3G or lower. Otherwise you will give a talk filled with incorrect misinformation.

I worked for a major telecommunications equipment manufacturer which has built equipment for every wireless protocol ever used from AMPS to 5G, and just about every piece of information presented in this talk was wrong or obsolete.

johnhaller
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Finally! I was wondering what the answer to this question was lmao cause all they say is put it in airplane mode and never explain why

andrewthewisp
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I use this feature everyday to save phone battery

One of the best tricks I've heard so far

vhynekervinrepato
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The pilot personally crashes the plane out of spite

placeholderdoe
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On one flight i accidentally left airplane mode off. The phone actually did manage to connect at least twice to cell service and received "Welcome to <country you were flying above>" SMS-messages. I was both surprised and impressed it managed to do that!

groentjuheu
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I fly a lot and had no idea this was what airplane mode was about. I thought it was something to do with the instruments the pilot used for the flight. I honestly don't use airplane mode much, because there was no perceivable difference between when I used it and when I didn't. But now that I know why it exists, I'm going to start using it much more in the future.

TheOneCleanHippy
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It's really amazing how strong waves can a cellphone generate using so little energy that it can do it for hours using only a simple battery and not plugged at the wall and draining huge amount of energy from the power grid.

l.f.
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1:33 Calls are not relayed wirelessly between cell phones via towers. Cell towers are connected to a wired network that handles routing etc.

Cell phones connect wirelessly to a cell tower, but in between the cell tower of the caller and recipient is a wired network.

Although in rural areas, it is possible that the cell phone connects to a tower that is not directly connected to the network. In that case the tower could relay the signal to another tower that is connected to the network. A call will always pass by a wired network

Youthure
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A moving train acts as a 'military jammer' as well. I experience the slowness/disconnect of the network for a few minutes multiple times in a day, whenever a train passes by.

jagadeeshk
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I was on a domestic flight in a rural area of Indonesia, when several people didn’t even stop their phone calls through the entire start-off process, until they had no mobile service anymore. It was pretty disturbing back then but retrospectively I can say, the statements in this video seem to be correct 😂

reiszwecke
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What an excellent and informative video, I've always wondered about this.

The only caveat is that cell towers don't only assign "colors" to individual phones. That was just a metaphor to get to the more interesting bits, but really all the different ways we've figured out how to multiplex phone signals is fascinating in its own right, and would make for a great video. Plus I'm sure a ton of people would be interested in and usefully informed by "what's the difference between 3G, 4G, and 5G anyway?"

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