Hands-On Tech 283: Is Airplane Mode Necessary?

0:00Coming up on hands on tech, let's take a look at Airplane Mode. Stay tuned. This episode is brought to you by OutSystems, the leading agentic systems platform. OutSystems is helping their customers modernize operations by enabling them to build, modernize, and operate enterprise systems, starting from any coding tool in a governed agentic engineering model. Without systems, you can coordinate and govern your entire agentic workforce within your enterprise ecosystem and accelerate impact with industry-proven agentic solutions that are pre-built, governed, and customizable to your business. It's time to innovate at the speed of AI without compromising quality or control, which is why thousands of enterprises worldwide trust OutSystems for their mission-critical apps. Teams of any size and technical depth can use OutSystems to build, deploy, and manage AI apps and agents quickly and cost effectively without compromising reliability and security. Without systems, you can accelerate ideas from concept to completion.

1:03It's the leading agentic systems platform that is unified, agile, and enterprise-proven, allowing you to build your agentic future with AI solutions deeply integrated into your architecture. OutSystems build your agentic future. Learn more at OutSystems.com slashtwit. That's OutSystems.com slashtwit. This is Toys. Hello and welcome to Hands-On Tech, I'm Michael Sergent, and today we are taking a tech question and answering them. This one is important. It's a question that I think anybody might have. It's a question that I've certainly had in the past, and this one comes in from Gene from Billings. Let's take a look at the question. Gene writes in, hey, Michael, flying home last month. The guy next to me left his phone on the whole flight, texting away, and the plane did not fall out of the sky.

2:03So what's the deal with airplane mode? Is there any real engineering reason for it in 2026, or is it a rule nobody's bothered to retire? And what's actually the smartest phone setup when you fly? Gene from Billings, Montana. Well, Gene, first and foremost, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to write in. If you have questions for me out there, you can email me hotattwit.tv, as I get in touch. But let's start with a short answer. Can you tell? There's a bit of a format at this point. So Gene, it's not theater, per se. But it's important to understand that airplane mode was not actually about the airplane. Instead it's more like runway mode or cell tower mode. Let's talk about what in the world is going on here. So we got to go back to the origin story of why cell phone use was banned on planes.

3:07The rule actually predates smartphones, if you can believe it. The FCC banned in flight cellular use back in 1991. And that's older than some of us are. Not to protect the planes, but actually to protect the ground network. Okay? Phone at 35,000 feet has line of sight to dozens of cell towers at once and can light them all up simultaneously. And in doing so, it can gum up service for people below. That is the real problem. And guess what? The ban is actually a real regulation that still exists to this day. If we look at 47 CFR prohibition on airborne operation of cellular telephones installed in or carried aboard airplanes, balloons or any other type of aircraft must not be operated while such aircraft are airborne, meaning not touching the ground.

4:07When any aircraft leaves the ground, all cellular telephones on board that aircraft must be turned off. The following notice must be posted on or near each cellular telephone installed in any aircraft. Bum, bum, bum, bum. Yes. So it's been around for a while. And it talks about interfering with the plane, right? No. Uh-uh. That is an explanation that came from aviation regulators as a precaution. And it is precaution because as far as I was able to determine, there is no doctor. A documented case of a passenger's phone bringing down or seriously endangering an aircraft. If you are curious to hear more about the history of why it happens, why the rules are there, and then what happens if you do skip it? There's a guide from autopilot that says, do you have to put your phone on airplane mode and here's what actually happens if you don't?

5:11Now that is due to two separate rules. The FCC rule since 1991 and the FAA rule that came later. So again, the FCC banned cell phone use on aircrafts in 1991 because they worried about ground network interference. When your phone is up there, it gets to see all of those towers instead of just one or two. So the cellular network below is going, what in the world is happening with a plane full of 200 active phones that are bouncing between these different towers at 500 miles per hour, they were really concerned that this could cause an issue. The FAA rule, it's different and it has to do it with the navigation and communication system. So it actually didn't come into later and it was basically a concern not much else other than that. Now that said in 2013, the FAA did relax the rule. It allowed passengers to use devices in airplane mode throughout the entire flight, including

6:13takeoff and landing before that they did ask you to power them down. Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about this week's sponsor of hands-on tech it's net suite. They say that every day your business is late to AI, you fold two days behind. But how do you keep up? The competition is only moving faster. Fortunately, there's net suite next. You probably know net suite, it's the AI-powered business management suite that securely connects all of your data. It's a unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR and CRM into a single source of truth trusted by over 44,000 customers. Net suite next is the next huge leap in how business gets done because AI is built into everything you do. It automatically surfaces custom insights throughout your day. AI agents work alongside you to solve problems and handle routine work and anytime you have a question about anything, ask just like you're having a conversation with a colleague.

7:17Net suite is customized for a wide range of industries so it supports the way your business truly works. Whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, it's time for Net suite next where your business meets AI. For the first time ever, you can try Net suite next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to net suite dot AI slash hot, built for every industry ready for every boardroom. Net suite dot AI slash hot. Thank you Net suite for sponsoring this week's episode of Hands on Tech. Let's get back to the show. So I don't know about you. Let's just get close for a second. I know there have been a couple of times where I forgot to turn on airplane mode and everything was fine. It's fine. But you do need to follow the rules that are provided to you. And so you know, you may be wondering though given that it doesn't cause this huge issue,

8:18given that it's not really a big problem, then why hasn't the rule been retired? So aviation safety culture is such that you don't wait for disaster to strike before you set things in place, before you set rules in place. So because researchers have documented phones producing stray emissions that can happen in bands near GPS, then regulators said, look, no, we're just going to make it so that you can't use a phone out of airplane mode. And then Europe actually shows, on the other hand, that the rule can evolve when the engineering catches up because the EU approved onboard 5G using what's called a picocel, which is a tiny cell tower that's inside the cabin. And so your phone isn't going, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, to every single tower that's on the ground. Instead, it's staying where it is on that actual plane.

9:19So it eliminates the tower problem. It eliminates the interference question. The US unfortunately hasn't gone there yet. So domestic flights still have that rule in place. As far as your seatmate goes, his phone didn't crash the plane. I mean, you didn't crash, right? It did, however, spend the flight, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, screaming. And it did so at max power trying to find towers. So that means that his battery was running low by the time he touched down if he wasn't plugged in. And at the very least, he was heating his device up, which is no good. And it was for nothing because cellular barely works when you're at cruising altitude. It barely works unless there's a picocel on the plane. And then of course, there's also violating FCC rules. He was refusing crew members' instructions to comply. And that is where there are penalties. So the realistic outcome in the end, a flight attendant says, hey, you know, stop.

10:21And you hope that that's where it ends, but it doesn't always end there. So just be aware of that. As far as your second question, excuse me, Jean, you asked about sort of a smart setup for flying, right? Well, first and foremost, just when you head in, flip on airplane mode when the door closes. And then if your device disables Wi-Fi upon airplane mode being turned off, which is not the case for many modern phones, then you can use Wi-Fi, then you can use Bluetooth. Those are allowed and they both work fine and have no impact on cell towers. Plus what's great about it is with airplane mode turned on, your battery when you touch down is going to be a lot more charged because your phone wasn't looking for towers the entire flight and going, I see that one. I see you, I see you, I see you, I see you. Again, smoothing so quickly through the air as all these towers are made available.

11:23So the one other bit of advice I'll give, of course, is try to download your movies, your playlists, your favorite books, your boarding pass, all of that before take off. And then you don't really have to worry about the fact that you're in airplane mode or wonder if the plane has Wi-Fi. So the bottom line here is that it's a real rule, it's actually a set of rules, but the folklore doesn't quite, I mean, it's folklore. It protects the ground network first. And then technically protects your phone battery second and then the plane third because again, there's no evidence of a plane, a passenger phone, I mean, causing a crash. There's simply been some instances of phones producing signals close to that of GPS. So you and your seatmate weren't in danger. He was just rude for not following the rules and also, of course, had a phone that was

12:25being rude to all the cell towers that were flying by and his phone was being rude to its own battery. So airplane mode plus Wi-Fi plus Bluetooth, that is the blessed combo and we thank you. Thank you so much for writing in Gene. My pleasure to be able to answer your question, my pleasure to be able to bring you all this show every week. If you have questions for me, email me hotatwitt.tv. That's how you get in touch and I'd love to hear from you. Thanks so much. I'll catch you next time for another episode of Hands on Tech. Bye-bye.