Just arrived from a long haul flight in F. A minute or two after take-off my wife said to me: 'Why is that man over there texting from his phone?'. I looked across the aisle from my position slightly aft of him, and sure enough I could see What's App messages being sent and received despite us being several hundred feet in the air at that point.

I leant across the aisle and said to the gentlemen, politely: 'Excuse me, are you sending text messages from your phone?'. He replied: 'Yes, why, does it worry you?', basically implying I was a nervous flyer or something.

I said: 'No, but I am an aerospace engineer [which is true BTW!] and I know all about the technical reasons why you shouldn't be doing that, so can you please put your phone on flight safe mode as requested by the crew?'

This he reluctantly did, though his body language made it quite clear he thought I was being a pedant.

Now, I know there is lots of debate about the real risks associated with using phones in flight, however every regulator on the planet requires that phones be switched to flight safe mode at least during take off and landing. I also know that there are regular reports from pilots suspecting that mobile phones have caused interference on their head sets or even - rarely - caused cockpit instruments to go awry. We are also all well aware that the CAA now requires all electronic devices to be switched off completely in the cabin prior to a low-visibility Cat III autoland as an extra precaution.

However I don't really want to start a debate about whether there are technical reasons that justify the current rules. My point is that the regulations state that phones must be in flight-safe mode during flight, so why are there certain regular flyers who seem to think that the rules don't apply to them? This particular individual was welcomed by the crew as the "most senior Gold card holder on today's flight", but I don't think he should take that as carte-blanche to ignore flight safety regulations?

Just needed to get that off my chest although I'm sure others have had similar experiences!