I always wanted to know what would happen and why do they go through this all the time. You know the drill. You find your seat on the plane, then wrestle your carry-on into the overhead bin, and then you hear…DING. The flight attendant reminds you to switch to airplane mode. What happens if you don’t? Are you going to crash the plane? Trigger the emergency slide or blow the door?
Let’s start with the obvious. Your phone isn’t powerful enough to take down a plane. Jetliners are built tough, with shielding and redundant systems to prevent any one gadget from causing a disaster. Your phone? Not that powerful. Sorry, Tim Cook.
But if you and everyone else leave your phones on full blast, the radio noise from all those signals can interfere with the pilots’ communications. It’s not dramatic. It’s just obnoxious. Think low-level buzzing and static in the pilot’s headset when they’re trying to talk to air traffic control.
So it won’t crash the plane. It might make the pilot say, “Can you repeat that?” to air traffic control. That’s not ideal when they’re coordinating more than a few 900,000-pound hunks of metal going 500 mph across an invisible highway in the sky.
This interference is more likely on planes with older electronics, typically ones built before 2005. Some older aircraft have had systems upgraded, though. It’s not about the plane’s birthday. It’s about what’s under the hood.
That’s why the rule is still around. It’s easier to just have everyone use airplane mode than risk messing with the cockpit comms on the one plane with vintage wiring.
At 35,000 feet, your phone is desperately pinging towers it flew past five minutes ago. It won’t connect. All it does is kill your battery and waste your time. The plane’s Wi-Fi and messaging system? That’s a different beast, totally, separate and built for flying.
The TSA is officially begging, yes, begging, people to stop using their Costco cards as a REAL ID at airport security. In a surprisingly spicy Facebook post (yes, the TSA has Facebook energy now), the agency wrote: “We love hot dogs and rotisserie chickens as much as the next person, but please stop telling people their Costco card counts as a REAL ID because it absolutely does not.”
People are seriously waving around a picture of themselves next to a 48-pack of toilet paper and expecting to board a flight. What a world, right?
