2 weeks ago
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One of the things we're always told when on a flight is to switch our smartphones into airplane mode - but why exactly do we need to do this?
A pilot recently took to TikTok to answer this question, reassuring people that it is "not a conspiracy".
TikTok creator PerchPoint (@perchpoint) admitted that forgetting this step “won’t cause the plane to fall out of the sky” or even really “mess with the systems on board”.
But he did note how he can tell when passengers haven't switched it off.
“If you have an aircraft with 70, 80, 150 people on board, and even three or four people's phones start to try to make a connection to a radio tower for an incoming phone call, it sends out radio waves,” the pilot explained.
“There’s the potential that those radio waves can interfere with the radio waves of the headset that the pilots are using."
He then gave an example of a recent flight where he had his headset on and was waiting to receive “clearance on which way to go” but noted how the message had interference when made it sound like there was a “mosquito” in his ear.
“It’s definitely not the end of the world but it’s pretty annoying when you’re trying to copy down instructions and it sounds like there’s a wasp or something flying around,” he explained.
“So if you’re ever curious why you’ve got to put on airplane mode, that’s why.”
Since sharing his experience, the pilot's video has over 798,000 views and nearly 75,000 likes as people have taken to the comments section to give their thoughts on turning their phones on airplane mode while flying.
One person said: "You should say this ON the flight, to the passengers".
"I think y’all should normalize getting on speaker and saying exactly this. “I can hear in my headset some of y’all do not have airplane mode on” it’ll freak people out, they’ll turn it on," another person wrote.
Someone else added: "Honestly thank you. I never understood this lol"
"Oh cool I never knew why we had to do it, good to know," a fourth person commented.
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