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Does airplane mode block calls5/16/2023 So, how is it that some planes offer cellphone service on board? There's a technology that allows passengers to make calls without the risk of interfering with the plane's electronics or ground networks. "The cell towers don't expect there to be traffic in the air, so their radiation patterns are focused on the ground." It's probably only when planes descend to less than 10,000 feet (3 kilometers), as they get closer to landing, that passengers could flip on their phones, connect and cause interference. In practice, at normal cruising altitude of 36,000 feet (11 kilometers) "if you do have your cell connection on in the air, you probably won't get any cell towers," Bilén says. "If there were major problems, we'd see planes falling out of the sky," Bilén says.īut that doesn't mean you can just ignore the ban. There's pretty good evidence that such protection works, because as Bilén notes, there probably are plenty of passengers who don't turn off their phones' cellular connections, sometimes unintentionally, even after flight attendants remind them before takeoff. "There's always the possibility of some adverse interaction, but it's essentially a risk that the companies have tried to mitigate by hardening their electronics, by putting shielding around them." Shielding or hardening means to surround the airplane's electronics (like the flight control systems) with an electrically conductive material to prevent electromagnetic interference from computers and cellphones. "Most planes nowadays are hardened," explains Bilén, who wrote an article about cellphones on aircraft for The Conversation in 2018. Sven Bilén, a professor of engineering design, electrical engineering, and aerospace engineering at Penn State University, says that phones aren't as much of a safety issue as they once might have been. So, is it really necessary to ban cellphone use on airline flights? Researchers in the mid-2000s concluded that phones did have the potential to interfere with critical electronics in aircraft, though they couldn't find any instances in which it had caused an accident, as this 2006 IEEE Spectrum article details. ![]() That prohibition is still in force, though in recent years the FCC considered - but then rejected in November 2020 - a proposal to allow a technology that would have permitted passengers to make cellular calls without creating interference. WiFi and Bluetooth access are also turned off but you can turn them on separately while still remaining in airplane mode.)Īdditionally, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates mobile phones, banned airline passengers in 1991 from making calls in flight, out of concern that those signals would interfere with communications networks on the ground. ![]() (In airplane mode, the ability to call and text is turned off. In 2013, the FAA did soften that stance slightly, allowing the use of mobile devices in airplane mode, in which the phone's ability to transmit radio signals to cell towers is turned off, as long as airlines could show that it wouldn't interfere with a plane's electronics. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has long prohibited the use of phones and other devices to connect with cellular networks, because of what it says is the potential for those electronic gadgets to interfere with aircraft navigation and communication systems.
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