keep your cell phone on while the plane is landing or taking off? The on/off button on my cell phone is broken, and I can’t turn it off. I can leave it at home if I have to, but I’d rather not. So, will it interfere with the plane’s controls or cause a crash?
It probably will have no effect, but the probability is not 0. It will introduce a bit of noise into the system, but how much and whether or not it will be non-negligible is not easy to determine.
Of course, the actual safety of the matter is irrelevant in this case. If a flight attendant catches you with your phone on and you don’t turn it off, that’s a quick boot off the plane and potentially your name flagged by the TSA.
Can you just pull the battery? I don’t know if the phone powers back after re-inserting it, but that might be one option.
There is a vanishingly small chance that it will interfere with the plane enough to cause a crash. If this is a concern to you, you can pull the battery, but that creates a problem when it’s time to use the phone again.
The main reason they want stuff turned off when the planes are taking off or landing is so that everybody’s paying attention to what’s going on, because things happen fast when the shit hits the fan, and they can’t wait for somebody to finish the call to grandma or stop videotaping the burning engines when it’s time to hit the silk.
Flight Mode?
Should be one of the top-level options on your phone’s menu. Most phones have this feature.
Flight mode as mentioned above or just turn the sound off while in flight.
Your phone must suck battery power if you can’t ever turn it off. Maybe just not charge it and let it die then charge it when off the plane?
Title edited to indicate subject.
Theoretically, cell phones can cause interference to all sorts of things. On the rare occasion when I’ve been able to talk to real pilots about it, the only ones who had actually seen problems with navigation equipment were on small planes. The only complaint I heard from big jet pilots was noise in their headsets, which every big jet pilot I talked to complained about. So that’s the most likely problem by far. Pilots are generally pretty good at their job, so I wouldn’t expect a little noise in the headsets to ever cause a crash. It’s still not a good thing though.
There is one case I am aware of where a cell phone on a plane setting up an incoming call (the cell phone and the tower talk back and forth a few times before your phone actually rings) accidentally caused a thrust reverser to deploy, which caused the plane to crash. While this sort of thing is extremely rare, it’s not impossible.
I am also aware of one case that happened overseas (not a US plane or airline) where a cell phone cause the plane to completely lose communication with controllers. Again, pilots aren’t idiots and they are trained to handle these types of emergencies since the communication equipment could fail at any time, so it didn’t cause an actual problem. The woman who refused to turn off her cell phone was arrested upon landing, though. I want to say it was a flight originating somewhere in Africa and landing in Italy or Greece, but my memory is a bit fuzzy on the details.
The FCC supports restrictions on cell phones in planes for two reasons, the first being the FAA’s concerns about possible interference to aircraft systems, and the second being that an airborne cell phone ties up communication channels in multiple towers, reducing the available bandwidth for folks on the ground. Historically there were a lot of problems in the early days caused mostly by airborne cell phones contacting not just multiple towers, but multiple systems at once. Those problems have all been fixed (out of necessity) so other than tying up channels and maybe causing a few people on the ground to not be able to complete their call, you won’t wreak any major damage to any cell phone systems.
I’ll third airplane mode. If you can’t find it, post your model number and someone here will tell you how (or that you can’t, but I’d be surprised).
This is an incorrect statement. It’s directly contradicted by the fact that there are in fact actual instances of cell-phone induced aircraft crashes and/or instrument failures. The FAA, IIRC, recently did a big review of the various electronic device rules, and decided that the mobile-phones off during take-off and landing was justified by the evidence.
If you have evidence to the contrary, please present it (as opposed to, say, your simple opinion on the subject).
Airplane mode is well and good for during flight, but, in terms of compliance with what you are supposed to do, it’s no different from simply muting the phone.
Now, if the thread is about how to get through the flight without the attendants being the wiser about your phone being on, that’s a different matter.
Looking at the FAA’s website, in their discussion of cell phone rules, they sum up:
So, the current rules say no cell phones. They didn’t find enough information to say cell phones are perfectly safe, so they’re leaving the rules as is. However, they didn’t offer any cites for how dangerous they are, which you’d think they’d provide if they had them.
If you have cites for any of the opinions you expressed, I’d love to see them.
Wait a second… so the use of cell phones is dangerous and might cause a crash or some sort of system malfunction. And yet they allow them on board aircraft, no problem. So why don’t terrorist organisations just have a mob of suicide loonies on a flight all turn on their cell phones at the same time? Something doesn’t make sense here.
Say what? From my cite above (bolding mine):
Granted, there is this:
So one might want to check the regulations on the airline one chooses – but this is about an airline’s decision, not the FAA, and strikes me as a case of over-cautiousness anyway.
Since airplane mode turns off the Wi-Fi and cellular radios in your phone, I don’t understand how you can say it’s no different than turning off the speaker. Airplane mode does in fact remove the possibility of the RF output of your phone interfering with the airplane’s electronics.
Do you have more detail on this? A cursory google didn’t turn up this incident, and I’d like to know more.
I am not contradicting you, but if cell phones are indeed causing crashes, I’m very surprised that the rules are so lazily enforced. I know that I’ve forgotten to turn off my phone more than once despite the attendant’s reminder, and, for crying out loud, many of the iPhone users I know don’t even know how to turn off their phones, and think that pressing the Home key so that the screen turns dark is sufficient.
I am very surprised that if this is a real and significant risk that’s causing documented crashes, cell phones aren’t confiscated, turned off, and stored separately during transit.
Mine’s a Nokia 2600. (I’m expecting Beam to be surprised)
67java89, I’m thinking that maybe the worst thing that could happen is they’ll kick you off the flight for not following directions.
Although I don’t fly much and don’t have a cell phone, so perhaps I’m not the best resource.
Although every flight I’ve been on in the last couple years, passengers are asked to turn their phones COMPLETELY OFF–not just put them in Airplane mode–during takeoff and landing. Maybe to make sure they’re really off during the most sensitive parts of the flights? I want to say I’ve been on about 40 flights in the past couple years, mostly Southwest but some other carriers too.
Dunno about ZenBean but I’m fully aware that older (e.g., 2nd gen) phones don’t always have the “Flight Mode” capability.
Basically, if all the phone can do is (an I know I’m exaggerating) make calls, text, and play “snake”, it was more cost-effective to make you turn off the “snake” game than add a function to turn off external communication 
Note that I stated “in terms of compliance”. It might not be broadcasting a signal, but flight attendants really aren’t meant to be arbiters of this.
Also, you seem to be confused about RF noise. While putting a phone in flight mode will prevent it from broadcasting wireless signals, pretty much any electronic gizmo (CD player, laptop (even with Wi-Fi off), MP3 player, etc) puts out some RF noise while it’s on. Whether or not they broadcast communications signals is irrelevant to emitting some kind of RF noise. Here’s a website I just Google’d that describes some of the effects.