Are phones on planes really so dangerous?

Yes this. My dd used to do a lot of long haul flights and she always paid the extra to be able to use her phone

We flew to Riga last month and had to land on auto pilot due to fog. The cabin crew demanded to see everyone’s phone was switched off and got quite arsey with some people. That was Ryanair.
They also yelled at people to sit down before the seatbelt sign had been switched off. Felt like we were on a school trip! 😂

Ok thanks interesting..must have been a v rare example of what the boffins worry about..

For the sake of the nervous flyers and as we're into autumn I'll mention (again) that there definitely are extra thorough checks needed prior to autolands in low visibility (and there's also often holding FWIW, because ATC reasons)

If anyone sees a crew really emphasising phones off and checking the same it's highly probable they"re doing it as part of the routine procedures, it doesn't mean there's a problem on their flight.

DH is a pilot and never puts his phone on airplane mode. If flying as a passenger he’ll quite happily make texts etc from the sky (there’s rather any signal though once you’re past take off/landing)

Your average Ryanair / Jet2 flight to Europe doesn’t. None that I’ve been on anyway.

It’s happened to me too and the cabin crew walked down the aisle making everyone show them that they were switched off fully. Funnily enough we were flying into Manchester and by the time we descended through the clouds we could see Yorkshire! (Not to disparage the fact there’d been fog though, we live in Jersey and fog is the bane of all our flying).

I actually work for the airline but was travelling as a commercial passenger. I've fly often and have never seen it before but that day something was different and they abandoned the landing until the phones were all physically checked. No idea of what was happening in the flight deck but something was definitely happening.

No idea. It just worried me

Have to say based on the dreaded "lived experience" that sounds odd/highly unusual but I wasn't there so who knows...

There was certainly no magic device on the flight deck that said "phone still on"...

They said it was interfering with the instruments a they needed to land on autopilot due to low visibility. We had to keep circling until the crew had manually checked all phones after several announcements failed to resolve the issue so they must have been able to tell somehow.

...and on older planes like the Sopwith Camel and Fokker Dr.1

It's a set of precautions specifically needed for take-offs and more typically landings in low visibilities, which usually is defined as something like vis less than 550 metres....maybe cloud below 200'..It's not a precaution needed on, for example, windy days, or very wet days so even frequent flyers can go years without being on a flight where the extra precautions and checks are needed.

Thank you for a very clear and sensible explanation. I think leaving WiFi on in airplane mode is a recentish thing and I wondered why it had changed.

I wouldn't assume such a walk through was down to crew knowing a device was on unless an announcement was made to that effect

I don’t know that that they knew a device was on but they walked the aisle pausing at every row saying variations of “all phones need to be off, properly off, please check your phones to ensure they’re off, we need phones off for the landing”. They were very insistent and did the walk through at least twice so I assume there was some sort of interference being caused.

I’ve been on 100s of flights, several with difficult landings and never experienced anything like that before or after

bad weather and the crew came through and asked everyone to ensure their phones were actually switched off and not just in flight mode/ on silent.

Depends on the airline to some degree but if you're preparing for an approach in low visibility it's pretty much standard for the crew to be extra vigilant and that may well involve an extra or slower than normal walkthrough of the cabin by the cabin crew to ensure people have all Personal Electronic Devices actually turned off.

I wouldn't assume such a walk through was down to crew knowing a device was on unless an announcement was made to that effect.

I’ve also had this experience.

bad weather and the crew came through and asked everyone to ensure their phones were actually switched off and not just in flight mode/ on silent.

this was probably about 7/8 years ago, at the time a pilot friend said that the phones could interfere with hearing through their headsets

What was the point in your patronising reply then? It’s not a problem (as more qualified people than you have clearly said) yet we need to watch a TikTok of a mobile phone setting off a computer screen in 1998 to understand the impact phones on planes have? 🤨

Would Bluetooth phone to phone have been a possibility?

ETA: Don't know about Ryanair but some airlines do allow Bluetooth to be used in flight.

No it was Ryanair and they were definitely whatsapping both ways as she was diagonally across the aisle from me - so I could see the messages pinging back and forth.

You haven’t noticed that that’s not a thing anymore? 🫤

We don’t use GSM networks these days, speaker interface no longer happens

OK I left BA around the same time and a very high percentage of the Longhaul fleet I was on had wifi, I suspect the 744 fleet might not have had it but can't remember..shorthaul side of things I'm pretty sure it was starting to appear on some of the shorthaul airframes around the time Covid hit.

(For info another post using wifi with phone in flight mode).

Remember when they used to have big signs in hospitals saying no mobile phones as well - can you imagine this now

I can't imagine airlines would get very far if they tried to ban all phones from ever being on board. That's why phone manufacturers came up with the idea of airplane/flight mode fairly quickly once they got more complicated than the old brick phones.

Ive interviewed engineers about this - basically they’re not really dangerous but there’s a tiny chance they might interrupt the messaging between ground control and the pilots so they ask people to turn on airplane mode. This has never happened but… better safe.

That used to be how it worked, and most phones even modern ones will automatically switch off wifi when placed in airplane mode, but since wifi has been fairly common on phones for a good few years now, you can usually reenable the wifi once it's in airplane mode and sometimes if you've done it once it will automatically leave it enabled for future.

Apologies I over simplified/missed a step.

If you go flight mode wifi will go off, but you can reselect wifi individually whilst leaving the phone element off(so wifi available, but no 4 or 5 G )

For example I'm now posting this with phone in flight mode but with wifi on, so connecting via the home wifi setup....