Mobile phones in airplanes?

Question

Do You think using your phone in a airplane actually effects the plane or its navigation?

Answer 1

I'm a systems, electronics and software engineer and I designed avionics and worked at the Royal Aircraft Etablishment. Everything important is shielded. The navigation radio antennas are on the outside of the plane right next to the other radio antennas which are transmitting way more power than any cell phone and on similar frequencies to the nav equipment and they have absolutely no effect. The small signal cables are all shielded very well. So no, I don't think phones have any effect.

Idiots use their phones or just switch them to silent, all the time. I have friends who should know better who have made calls in flight because they think they are just too bloody important to do what a flight attendant tells them. People just don't think the rules apply to them. And yet the aircraft fly fine. Here's a quote for you from the first article below:-

"U.S. airlines alone carry on average some 2 million passengers per day. If just 1% of these passengers accidentally or deliberately leaves their cell phones on, that means some 20,000 cell phones remain on during flights every single day. Despite this, no crash has ever been definitively attributed to cell phone or gadget interference. "

Mythbusters tried this and it's in the same category as setting fire to a gas station with a cell phone, it's just not happening.

On some small light aircraft some non-radio equipment has been found to interfere. But radio equipment, cell phones are radios, is much more tightly controlled.

I expect to get a bunch of thumbs down for this, the popular perception is that cell phones interfere because that's what the media says. But the media doesn't have a clue.

Right now the main thing stopping the use of cell phones in aircraft is that the FCC thinks they would interfere with ground users, a much more technically accurate fear, since an antenna at 40,000 feet gets great coverage. Airlines had planned to allow cell phone usage. Read the first article below, basically it says the reason the government departments cultivate uncertainty is that they don't want the expense of proving anything.

So lets ask a bunch more people who don't know anything and perpetuate their ignorance as the best answer :-(

PS. I love the "I've heard" and "probably" answers, they are as reliable as pregnancy advice from teens "you can't get pregnant if you do it standing up" and "you can get pregnant if you sit ona seat that a man sat on while it's still warm".

Answer 2

They do affect the aircraft systems, mainly the ILS (Instrument Landing System). This system receives signals from the airfield telling them whether their approach is good or not. The frequencies used in this system are very close, if not identical to Mobile phone signals. I have seen an experiment in which a mobile phone was set to transmit (call somebody) and at the same moment the vertical bar on the display (see diagram on second link) showed full deflection right (telling the pilot to steer hard right whilst landing!) In bad weather/night, this could prove fatal for all of the passengers and crew!

Answer 3

As a pilot having accidentally left my phone on, I can attest to there being little interference. I do hear a slight audio disturbance when climbing or descending through a certain altitude. I assume this to be when the phone goes into an automatic cutout and cut in. I think when too many cell towers are communicating with the phone as with increase in altitude the phone drops off line. Nobody has explained this to me, just my own observations.

Answer 4

Only after landing. Certain mobile phones (particularly the old analog ones) interfere with the navigation, so as a precaution mobile phone usage is not allowed on commercial flights.

Answer 5

It makes no difference what you or I think, the people who are responsible for aviation safety and the people who design aircraft electronics think there is a chance of frequency interference especially during the critical landing phase when the aircraft is following an electronic glide scope. There is no conversation that is so important that it could not wait the 5 minutes till you get off the plane.

Answer 6

No. If it was that serious, they'd never let you bring one on board.

But I hope the restrictions stay in place. I wouldn't want to be stuck on a plane for several hours if people could use their phones. Hearing "guess where I am" over and over would be enough to drive me crazy.

Answer 7

No they use different frequencies cell phone and com and nav radios haven't used the same freqs for more then 10 years that is why it was said not to use your phone on aircraft, but modern digital phones don't cause a problem at all.

Answer 8

Yes, eventhought the plane is quite protected it's possible that the plane intercept the wrong frequence at the wrong time. It could get things crutial if it stays on the wrong frequence. I guess the worse case scenario is if there's many different frequences at the same time and pilots are not able to tune their equipment back, making things really risky on such gravity.

Answer 9

The waves that are transmited when you call someone or use the internet could effect the ILS, NAV1, NAV2, COM1, COM2 and the GPS. The chances of that are very, very slim but airlines nowadays want to take precautions.

Answer 10

It depends on the altitude that the plane is flying at. Below "x" amount of feet, the cell phone use, or it's activity signal, will bounce off tower to tower within range, creating interference.