Now that one major market is finally doing it, this will spread and eventually become the norm. What I hope we don’t lose in the process is “airplane mode” as a concept, even if the name becomes an anachronism.
Being able to temporarily “unplug the cable” from a wireless device is a valuable feature, even if it’s no longer required by regulation.
On every phone I've used "airplane mode" turns off all wireless functionality, and then you can optionally turn Wi-Fi back on while remaining in airplane mode. Are there devices that don't work this way?
Switching on airplane mode might switch off wifi, but "being in airplane mode" does not mean wifi is off, because wifi is still allowed in airplane mode.
I'm just saying this here because I thought for quite some time that airplane mode means no radio signals from the phone.
The precise behavior of Airplane mode on iOS / WatchOS is dependent on the user’s interactions. The default is to turn off everything but Bluetooth. But, if you turn Airplane mode ON and then turn Wi-Fi on, iOS will remember this preference.
You can learn more about Airplane mode on Apple’s website:
My Samsung turns off bluetooth if nothing is connected to it but doesn't if something is. Pretty hand for when you're listening to music on your flight and you turn on airplane mode.
Just wait until iPhone 20 removes the consumer option to power off your phone and starts to send you panic notifications that you are near 20% battery! And we might lose our valuable tracking information!
Or even better, failing to have consistant location data is a violation of warranty!
I use airplane mode to cycle the radio. Sometimes the firmware gets wedged and cycling it (by turning airplane mode on and then off) forces it to reset and reacquire a signal, which leads to better connectivity.
i used it to get data to reconnect and potentially give me a new ip address. that's needed because i am in a country where some ip addresses are apparently being abused and as a result get blocked by some services.
The EU will require manufacturers to enables sideloading, which will finally make powerful ad- / tracking-blockers on iOS possible. Also, they will require that everyone can easily change batteries. Even if that does not mean that a battery can easily removed temporarily, it probably also makes it easier to install custom hardware switches that turn off the phone entirely.
Personally, I think that the tracking hype has seen its peak.
You’re fucked if you have no signal for an extended period of time and you can’t go to airplane mode. It will keep searching at maximum power and run out of battery in 2 or 3 hours.
Very high chance of Apple removing it. Heck, AirPods Max have no power button. Someone at Apple is losing sleep over the fact people have control over the radios in their phone.
Certainly. They've already changed it such that "turning off" Wi-Fi or Bluetooth from the Control Centre doesn't actually turn off the radios, it simply disconnects any devices, or disconnects from any networks the device is currently connected to. You have to turn on Aeroplane Mode or go to the Settings app to actually turn them off.
They changed it a few years ago so that they would automatically turn on again once you are at a different location, and if you wanted it permanent off, you can do so via settings app.
I found this to be an improvement in user experience because I would often turn off wifi in the control panel when I was on a weak wifi connection to force the phone to use the mobile network, and then I would forget to turn it back on when I went inside again.
This change made it so I did not have to remember to turn wifi on again.
However, I did not read anything about toggling in control panel not actually turning the radios off.
I mean, it's not a feature which would get my "voting" attention. While I do hope for it to stay, I don't recall any situation when I wanted for my phone to stop doing its primary (well, at least for me still it is primary) function of receiving phone call and SMS.
I use it at night when I want to sleep without interuptions. I guess you can always just turn the phone off entirely. Assuming that doesn't become impossible also.
If we're talking Apple devices, Focus mode is explicitly defined for that case, and allows fine-grained settings for specific sources to allow through, so you can still get, e.g. high-priority midnight calls from the family/lawyer/local comic book shop.
Not so much calls but emails, text messages, amber alerts, local hysteria about the weather, etc.
Yes I could probably figure out how to selective silence the alerts for these various thing based on time of day and type of message etc. but life is too short for that, I just want one easy way to shut everything up.
I have do not disturb setup for nighttime hours - if I’m using the phone I’ll see texts but otherwise it won’t go through unless someone is on my approved list or doublecalls
i have friends on different timezones, and they talk in groups that are important to me, so i don't want to silence these groups. it's far easier to silence the whole phone for the night. airplane mode is an easy way to achieve that.
Perhaps, despite my age, I'm just an out-of-the-loop dinosaur, but I have no clue how does that work. Do phones nowadays have an option to dial multiple numbers to have a group phone call?
text messaging in chat groups. they still beep when a message appears in a group or at least when someone replies to a message i sent or mentions me. i have most groups on silent by default but some groups are important so for those i keep notifications on.
apart from that there are also voice group chats which on some apps start with a ring at least if i am explicitly invited. (though that usually doesn't happen when i am asleep)
Wouldn't simply muting the device be just as effective? (with the added bonus of being aware in the morning if somebody did actually try to reach out to you during the night)
You can even set the phone to automatically silence everything every night, but still let through phone calls from certain contacts in case of emergency.
Then you would be muting also alarms. You can configure complex setup and what not, with some sounds buzzing and some not, but people want one button solution and simplicity (for good reasons).
I hate to break it to you, but this is a perfectly normal thing in Asia. You pay "roaming" rates for calls on board, so it naturally keeps calls short due to the higher per-minute cost.
It's been around for over a decade, and it isn't particularly annoying.
In fact, planes have had seatback phones since the '90s (you swiped your credit card to use it) and that also worked quite well.
When certain iOS devices are factory reset, they default to cellular data being turned on (and available using Apple-provisioned carrier credentials) to use mobile data service to activate even without connecting them to a local network.
I know at least a cellular iPad Mini has done this to me when I didn't want it to. (I was doing an experiment for a year where I try to keep Apple from knowing my location, via Wi-Fi VPN routers and no location services. FWIW, the experiment failed because of surveillance features like this.)
I hope they maintain voice/video calls being illegal on flights. I have no desire to be stuck in an airplane that sounds like an open floorplan office.
But please feel free to let customers browse TikTok with their headphones on.
> But please feel free to let customers browse TikTok with their headphones on.
If my experience with trains is anything to go by then I can guarantee you that there will be at least one person doing it without the headphones and volume set to 100%.
Seems to me that anyone under age 25-ish has headphones permanently grafted to their ears. I exaggerate a bit but like young people rarely forget their phones because they notice within a few minutes that they don't have it, people are increasingly using headphones so much that they will not need to remember them.
My kids were constantly losing wallets, money, credit cards, keys, drivers licenses, etc. but none of them ever lost a phone. I expect headphones will go the same way soon.
For older folks, yeah. I often leave the house without my phone, because I go for hours at a time not using it.
I suspect it's more a function of cost and class. The people who pay $500 to fly aren't the same as the people who pay $2.50 to be on the subway, or jump the turnstile altogether.
A notable difference between economy and front cabin is the passengers. Mostly good: pets and kids are uncannily well behaved. Sometimes bad, e.g. more arguing.
The average passenger likely paid far more than $10, so I think their point stands, sort of. I would add that trains for longer than a few hours in many western countries often cost more than the typical price of a Ryanair ticket, so I’m not sure the class difference is very large in some countries.
I always wonder how these people don't feel embarrassed when their phone starts blasting out sound on a relatively quiet bus/train. I know some people would immediately mute their phone if they accidentally did that, but I suppose these people don't care.
I travel some 600 km one-way to the HQ per train every month.
The correct answer is to not book second class tickets, ever, always book "first class quiet zone", and inform offending co-travellers about societally unacceptable behaviour, friendly at first, then increasingly passive-aggressive. There are always some people who are incorrigible ... but Bose N700 noise cancelling headphones also help.
We actually have "quiet zones" in second class here (Netherlands), but it's a bit of a hit-and-miss type of thing. Usually when I've (politely) asked people to stfu I've gotten a reasonable reply ("oh, sorry, didn't realize"), but sometimes not so much, or just say "okay" and continue. Sometimes I don't bother because I'm not in the mood, or the people seem unlikely to be receptive.
1st class tends to be rather expensive. Depending on where you live, even 2nd class can be quite expensive.
TIL voice calls are illegal on flights. What about all those credit card phones you can make voice call with?
Honestly I don't think there is reason to treat airplane any different than train or bus, actually the longest journeys I've made in my life were not on plane, but on bus or train, both raking 30+ hours, while my longest direct flight was like 12 hours.
After all nobody stops you from using headphones, if you find ambient noise annoying. I much more prefer open floorplan noise over screaming baby and obviously nobody is going to ban babies/children from flying.
I have been waiting far too long for the subvocalization devices in SF (science/speculative fiction) to exist and become widespread. With current advances in AI/ML voice recognition I feel like we are about ready to try it, but I haven't seen any attempts yet.
Anyone know if there is a project or startup working on this?
I've been experiencing full connectivity on every Alaska flight for last year. My phone has T-mobile plan that allows direct connections. There is traffic shaping but it's easily bypassed by the VPN and voila, everything is available, youtube, telegram, whatever. It's not that amazingly fast but works. I bet I could do a voice call if I wanted to. But I won't do it because it's not polite to neither my neighbors nor person I'd call.
I use ExpressVPN these days. So, alaskawifi->web auth->T-mobile pass redeem with my phone number where I have their top service->ExpressVPN to LA servers->Full internet unblocked
I find it interesting how most of the comments focus around maintaining quiet on the aircraft, and very little about the technical details behind this rule (interference with communications radio, interference with ground-based navigation signals, and impact on the cellular network itself).
At least in the US, there's two different rules relevant to in-flight cell phone use:
- 14 CFR 91.21 [1] - FAA rule prohibiting use of any electronics during air-carrier/instrument flight which the aircraft operator hasn't approved, in order to prevent interference with the avionics.
- 47 CFR 22.925 [2] - FCC rule prohibiting airborne use of cellular telephones specifically, in order to prevent phones from talking to too many towers at once and stressing the cellular network. (As altitude increases the radio horizon increases, so at altitude your phone can "see" significantly more towers. The cellular network is built on the principle that a phone can only see a small handful of towers at a time, enabling frequency reuse.) This rule technically only applies in the "Cellular Radiotelephone Service" band, which is one of several different bands a cellphone can use, and it's one of the older ones — but you have no idea which band your cellphone is using at any given time.
The FCC has talked about updating 47 CFR 22.925 and/or harmonizing the rules between cellular bands, but who knows if they'll ever get around to it. [3]
FWIW, as a private pilot, I have first-hand experience with interference when somebody forgot to switch their cell phone off. It was difficult to hear ATC over the "click-click-BUZZ" of GSM interference through the headset. Granted, this was a small airplane, so passengers were much closer to the avionics... but it's not just a hypothetical.
Cell phones tend not to work very well (if at all) above about 5,000 feet anyway, since cell tower antennas are directional and pointed towards the ground.
Your (b) is an especially tendentious phrasing. If the security folks could be sure your bottle contained tap water from home there wouldn't be any reason to exclude it. Instead, your bottle is prohibited because they can't distinguish its contents from bomb ingredients.
Now, I don't think the actual reasoning passes a cost benefit test, but criticizing it on grounds that have nothing to do with the real reason isn't helpful.
Yes, you are right, it was maybe a stupid phrasing, I'm particularly annoyed by it and I should have given a better example (but I disagree that you cannot distinguish tap water from bomb ingredients. Of course you can. And I did even talk about the stupid 100ml limit, which is apparently the threshold you need for bombs. And they will lift the limit soonish, because apparently the counter-terrorists have won).
Anyway, let's take a better example: I'm not allowed to bring weapons in the cabin because they are a safety risk. This is an understandable risk, they will enforce it (not by asking but by searching), and if you still end up with a weapon in the plane and disturb the flight, you will for sure end up in jail.
If your cell phone rings loudly during take off, you will politely be asked to turn it off. If it rings silently, nobody will ever care.
It makes a bit more sense when you take into account mitigation strategies for each hazard.
- If somebody has a weapon in an aircraft and is intent on using it, it's unsafe, and there's not a whole lot that can be done. You're all trapped in a sealed pressure vessel, and law enforcement isn't coming until you're on the ground. Your only mitigation strategy is to hope the crew and passengers can fend for themselves.
- If you lose ground-based navigation during landing, it's unsafe, but there are several mitigation strategies. You're not going to land at that moment anymore, but the pilot can abort the landing, switch over to GPS, and fly the missed approach to get back up to altitude. At this point there's time to troubleshoot... They can make an announcement asking passengers to switch off electronics. They could fly an RNAV approach. If the weather's good, they could land visually. Worst case they can fly to a military base and make a ASR approach (I don't think this has ever happened with an airliner).
There's different levels of unsafe. You have to consider what the specific risks of each are.
Was there ever a missed approach due to a cell phone not being in air plane mode? How was the cell phone located? What would happen if the cell phone was in the luggage in the cargo bay?
Sorry, but this sounds all very hypothetical. This this was a real problem there should be other procedures by now.
A quick search through the NASA ASRS database shows several reports where the ILS or VOR receiver was behaving erratically, sometimes during descent. In some cases the crew was able to land visually, in others the crew crew had enough time to ask passengers to switch off phones and the problem went away.
Most of these are older reports, take that as you will. It's entirely possible LTE doesn't interfere with the ILS/VOR. I honestly don't know.
Note also that this only lists reports made through NASAs reporting system. There are other reporting systems used by commercial operators (i.e. ASAP) that I can't easily query.
If I expand the search to include 5G interference, I get 97 recent results. That's a different issue, but at least worth mentioning to show that interference is still a general concern. I'm not going to list all of those, but you're welcome to query for them at the above link.
> What would happen if the cell phone was in the luggage in the cargo bay?
Then they would use one of the other contingency options I already mentioned to land visually or using other sensors. Still not a "safe" situation if this happens when you're close to the ground. If this were to happen during a Cat III approach, it would be extremely bad.
The interference I experienced was just a couple years ago, from an LTE handset. It had fallen back to 2G mode due to the weak signal at altitude.
As I understand it (and someone more versed in cellular backends can correct me), the reason why 2G GSM interference was so noticeable was because the TDMA-based radio would switch on and off at an frequency within the audible range, and once inductively coupled with a nearby audio cable would be strong enough to play sound through speakers.
That doesn't mean newer cellular radios don't interfere. They can, just not audibly. Newer CDMA-style radio modes (used on LTE/5G) aren't switching on and off like the TDMA ones did, but they're still emitting the same amount of power.
In particular, I'd be most worried about the aircraft's navigation radio. The technology used for ILS/VOR navigation is technologically simple, and easy to interfere with. A car driving past the wrong area of the airport can disrupt the signal. (There's "ILS Critical Areas" on airport taxiways that are marked off for this very reason, and ground controllers will prevent aircraft or vehicles from entering those areas when there's an aircraft on an ILS approach.)
I can see this leading to AeroMobile cleaning up. They have microcells on many international flights that charge you crazy roaming rates particularly for data. Your phone connects and uses it automatically. Right now mostly only intentionally as people are fairly used to actually turning airplane mode on.
My carrier Telstra charges $3/MB still now for AeroMobile. Madness. I wonder if anyone has a non stupid rate with them? It’s also 75c/SMS and $5/minute for calls.
I always enjoyed spacing out for 12-14 hours (long haul) with no social media, no pointless Reddit browsing and no need to contact anyone at work. Guess that's gone now.
I fly long-haul so there is literally no internet for the entire flight (although satellite wifi is now available, it is slow). Maybe it's different within Europe/US.
I can’t imagine being stuck next to a babbling 15 year old girl literally 1.5 ft from my ear for six hours.
And no, noise cancelling headphones are not good enough to drown out conversation at this close a distance. And plenty of people get upgraded to first on parents miles such that first class carriage is no guarantee. Hopefully the market will sort this out and offer ‘quiet flights’ or fare classes.
Just wanted to add that middle-aged business men on corporate conference calls are among the worst offenders, as anyone who frequently takes the Acela can attest.
On one level it doesn't matter why we find it more annoying to overhear a phone call - we just do.
On another, psychology studies found "When trying to concentrate on a test, students found that overhearing someone talking on the phone was more intrusive than a two-sided conversation."
Talking to a seat mate stranger for several hours is far less common and the persons doing so are usually not literally in next seat inches from ones ear. I’ve also noticed people on phones tend to talk louder. Listening to music on a plane is nearly universally done through headphones.
At the very least I hope they disallow things on take-off and landing: most safety issues happen during those phases of flight, and getting out of the aircraft quickly is very important.
It's important that everyone has some situational awareness should something happen.
> important that everyone has some situational awareness should something happen
I’m reading a book with noise-cancelling headphones on or asleep during landing and take-off. Most people, particularly frequent flyers, are similarly distracted.
Many countries and do not allow passengers to wear headphones during take off or landing for this reason.
I was quite shocked at it when an Air Canada flight attendant asked me to remove mine. I now always follow this practice, it’s a reasonable safety precaution.
I’ve always thought having hundreds, or thousands, of people zipping around at those speeds would be extremely demanding on the network? Lots of handovers between cells? What happened to that problem? Or was that never a real problem to begin with?
That was my original thought as well, but reading the article again, it looks like they are talking about putting 5G "cells" on the actual airplanes. Given how much cheaper satellite broadband access has gotten, it actually makes a lot of sense.
Cell phone providers will negotiate with airlines to get their "micro-cell" installed and connected to the existing internet uplink. Once this is fairly ubiquitous, cell phones will be "whispering" to the in-airplane tower, and hence won't bother the cell towers on the ground. A cell provider's goal is to provide access in as many places as possible with as little work required by you as possible - this is one step better than inflight wifi from that regard.
Lufthansa runs a micro-cell onboard the aircraft. You're connected to a single dedicated cell tower inside the airplane, not to stations on the ground. No handoffs involved.
(The airplane's micro-cell will then have a backhaul over satellite or dedicated air-ground radio, just like in-flight wifi. Yes, there are handoffs there, but it's not via the normal cellular network - which is an important distinction.)
This also means the cellphone's radio is transmitting at minimum power, since it's right next to the antenna for the micro-cell.
Satellite connectivity is no longer expensive, so why would you make it prohibitively expensive when you can also offer a $10 in-flight internet option many passengers will use?
Because you are a telco and exploiting your captive market is your business model. The same reason why an out-of-plan international call can cost dollars per minute unless you happen to have the specific, convoluted combination of plans/add-ons/bolt-ons in which case it magically becomes free.
Who wouldn't want the opportunity to silently rip people off for several bucks because their phone accidentally connected to the in-flight cell and dared to transmit a few kilobytes of data?
Even from your perspective, telcos would have a utilitarian need to price attractively, in order to change both consumer and business expectations to be connected and to persuade them to give up downloading content and work in advance of the flight.
That doesn’t seem to be happening though - there was plenty of opportunity for this in the EU but it took legislation effectively mandating roaming to be free for it to become affordable - until then carriers were happily swindling their customers.
While filling my car's fuel tank recently I noticed a sign saying mobile phone use was ok, just not while filling the tank. Seems reasonable. I remember the days when use of a cell phone anywhere near the bowser was strictly verboten! (Australia)
It's same thing, data is calls and million other things, people should do whatever they want with their data.
Some voice call ban is very low on list of my priorities what should rather be banned in flight - reclining seats and screaming babies would sure beat voice calls.
ugh, here comes the loud HEY I'M ON THE PLANE. LOOK AT ME I'M TRAVELING. %NAME OF CABIN CLASS% %BRAG ABOUT DESTINATION%. This might actually be annoying enough to convert people to other transport modes (that or everybody will end up forking out for Bose 700s)
We already put up with screaming children and communicable diseases to fly because the utility is so high. Hard to imagine switching over annoying phone calls. Not only that, but you have the same problem on busses and trains.
My experience with noise cancelling headsets has been that they are great for background airplane noise, and not so good with screaming babies and their parents rattling banter. It seems unlikely that we are going to be protected from people on their cell phones.
The “quiet car” on medium-haul passenger rail routes (e.g. Acela in the US.) or a sleeper car on long-haul rail or a first class “private room” on airlines like Emirates.
In the Netherlands the quiet car is the worst because all you hear is the antisocial people ignoring the signs. At least in the other cars they are drowned out by the normal people.
Being able to temporarily “unplug the cable” from a wireless device is a valuable feature, even if it’s no longer required by regulation.