*Have you ever wondered why, exactly, why your smartphone has the “airplane/flight mode” feature? Does it mean airline passengers never keep their phones active? Before we answer these questions, let’s start with a bit of good news for the year 2023: airline passengers within the European Union will not have to set their mobile phones to “flight/airplane mode” when in the airplane.
This move came after the European Commission came to a decision in November to permit airlines operating in the EU airspace to “provide the latest 5G technology on their planes.”
With the faster messaging, phone, and data services that come with the 5G technology, passengers get to use their phones just as they do when on the ground.
However, airline passengers in the US will still have to contend with the “airline mode” rules, depending on the type of phone one has. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) still limit the usage of cellular devices on civilian aircraft. They only permit the use of devices one can disable from cellular transmission functions. That is … devices with a “flight mode” feature.
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So, what does your phone have to do with operating airplanes? The FAA has often raised concerns that certain device signals can interfere with the aircraft’s “navigation or communications” system. There are federal regulations also in line with this.
The FCC once said that disallowing the use of certain frequency bands was put in place to ensure in-flight usage does not create “potential interference to wireless networks on the ground.”
But why would the US still be hard on passengers using their devices on the airlines at a time the European Union is relaxing its rules? The answer, according to the FAA, is that the 5G technology in US-based airlines doesn’t work the same as those operating in other parts of the world. That is, 5G technology in other parts of the world works differently than it does in the U.S. The rest of the world has networks that use less power, strategically placed antennas, and maybe most importantly, “frequencies with a different proximity to frequencies used by aviation equipment.”
The chief executive of the UK Flight Safety Committee, Dai Whittingham, discussed the issue just last week, per the BBC.
“There is much less prospect of interference,” he said, “We have a different set of frequencies for 5G, and there are lower power settings than those that have been allowed in the U.S.”
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