Pilot Reveals What Actually Happens If You Don't Switch Your Phone To Airplane Mode

If you’ve ever taken a flight, you might have wondered what the big deal was about switching your phone to “airplane mode” before the airplane took off—and if you didn’t, if you could really be responsible for that giant, metal bird falling out of the sky.

According to pilot and TikToker @pilotperch, you indeed will not cause the airplane to fall out of the sky, or for the machinery of the aircraft to warp and malfunction, but your phone not being in airplane mode could still cause problems for the pilot, their copilot, and their dispatch team on the ground.

According to @pilotperch, it’s all about communications through those headsets:

“The plane will not fall out of the sky, and it won’t even mess with the systems on board. But it does have the potential to mess with the headsets.”

“If you have an aircraft with 70, 80, or 150 people on board and even three or four people’s phones start to try and make a connection to a radio tower for an incoming phone call, it sends out radio waves.”

“There’s the potential that those radio waves from the tower can interfere with the radio waves of the headset that the pilots are using.”

“It’s pretty annoying when you’re trying to copy down instructions, and it sounds like a wasp or something flying around you.”

Pilot @pilotperch gave an example from the night before when he and his copilot got the airplane ready to lift off, and they turned the airplane around to go down the airstrip.

He attempted to check in with dispatch to make sure they were taking the correct flight path, and while they were giving him directions and coordinates, he heard buzzing in his ear “like a mosquito,” which is common inference noise when a passenger has forgotten to switch their phone to airplane mode.

You can watch the video here:

Some TikTokers still were not convinced.

@perchpoint/TikTok

But others appreciated the PSA and vowed to be more diligent about using airplane mode.

@perchpoint/TikTok

Though the TikTok community was divided over this pilot’s advice and expressed varying levels of concern about the conflicts a lack of airplane mode poses with headsets, it seemed like an easy enough rule to adhere to on a flight.