Accidentally left cell phone on, connected, during 2-hour flight.
 

a couple of weeks ago, I was on a [undisclosed] 2-hour flight on. I made a 1-minute call to check my home voicemail just before they started boarding. I turned it off and dropped the phone in my european.

after the plane landed, I waited for my bags to come out. that when I took my phone out and was shocked to find that it was still on and connected. my voicemail at home is not setup to disconnect a call unless the calling party disconnects first. The phone showed talk time of 2 hours and 25 minutes.

I assume the only reason the phone remained connected was that it was a express flight on a turboprop plane, flying at very low altitude?

now the obvious question, what could have happened? :(

at least it was by accident...i cannot believe the amount of people who are busy checking email on their blackberrys while in flight (yes i am positive they are connected, and not via wifi because UA STILL does not have wifi on their flights).

Are you sure they're checking their email and not just playing BrickBreaker or some other game?

I've encountered many, many other fliers, whether on their laptops or smartphones, checking/composing e-mails during flight. However, that's all they're doing. They don't actually send/receive new ones until they land.

They could also be playing games like wildcatlh said.

I have checked in for a future flight while in the air (yes, that's a no no), but that was shortly after takeoff. I got brief periods of connectivity according to my phone, but I don't think I would have been able to connect. No idea how you could stay connected for 2+ hours on a regular flight w/out wifi.

Absolutely nothing. If there was any convincing evidence that cell phones had a chance of disrupting important systems, you would not be able to fly with them.

Per the above posts, the Blackberrys have an "radio off" function. One can read and compose emails for hours from the device memory while offline, and when it is reconnected on the ground, the emails are all sent at once.

Blackberrys work very poorly if more than a few thousand feet off the ground, and not at all at cruising altitudes.

On a flight 6 months ago (MEM-MSP); about 5 minutes before landing (well below 10,000) the guy sitting next to me pulls out his cell phone and calls his wife. Calls go through without issue and they chat for about 1 minute. I would have said something, but the guy had previously identified himself as a cop, so I figured it would be best to let it be...

Anyway, I am still here. Granted I had no clue what might have been going on up in the cockpit. Though we were on a 757-300 near the rear; so presumably fairly far away from most of the sensitive avionics (though I am no airplane expert, so I really don’t know).

Bad News: It is what DID happen. At 1:11 into your flight, the plane nosedived into the ground and you are deceased.

Good News: We don't know if you are posting from Heaven or He!!, but obviously they have free Wifi as your posts are coming thru as long as your laptop battery holds out.

Best News: You're in the Afterlife, so time for you to do the Ultimate TRIP REPORT with pictures, please. :D

Agreed.

I remember sitting at a Networld/Interop in a wireless seminar given by Craig Mathias, a well-respected wireless expert. I asked him about the cell phone/plane thing and he just chuckled a bit and said that always comes up. He went on to explain that he discussed this at length with Boeing engineers and one of them summed it up nicely: "Do you honestly think we'd design a plane that could be brought down by someone simply having their cell phone on?" One of the big reasons, he said, was that wireless systems weren't designed to see so many towers simiultaneously and the handoffs would cause a lot of problems, assuming that at altitude the phone would actually be able to connect.

Looking at one of the old aircell maps, you'd see that there actually aren't that many towers for them to minimize handoffs.

I also think that a large portion of the ban was to protect the monopoly airlines had on phone calls. A lot of money to be made when someone needed to make a call.

First of all, cell phones rarely get a reliable signal above 10,000 feet. Also, as mentioned, the number of handoffs make a consistant signal virtually impossible. Second, the ban is more about takeoff/landing safety and not about the phones causing interference.

If your phone maintained a connection during an extended period of flight time, I'd be unbelievably impressed. I think your talk time was on the ground, though.

I regularly have signal throughout intra-caribbean hops on props (rhyme!). I can map when I'll hop off AT&T over Tortola and onto Lime somewhere over Jost Van Dyke/Virgin Gorda.

I tended to think that people were serious in turning off their cell phones during the flight- but did I understand correctly that you can be on internet during the flight? I don't see how this is possible. As for having left your cell phone on by accident for the whole duration of the flight... I don't think anything really bad can happen from that (and obviously nothing did happen). I think they just tell everyone to turn them off just so that there is less chance of anything intercepting with their functions or whatever. I guess it's a precaution to be extra safe

If the aircraft has wireless internet installed you could feasibly be online...but otherwise you wouldn't be able to get connected.

I have never...ever turned my phone off in flight just on principle. It always loses signal while climbing. It is a ridiculous policy that has no basis other than control.

Nothing will happen. Nothing did happen.

I've flown airplanes with 26 radios, multiple satcoms, and various other comm suites installed. We still flew.
I fly general and corporate aviation with phones and have no problems.

Ciao,
FH

I left my cellphone on by accident one time flying HKG-SFO and nothing happened except the battery drained pretty quickly.