The amount of information I am going to share in this article makes me a little scared, and perhaps I should not reveal my identity. Maybe I should write this article in an anonymous form.
Because if it is illegal, I have broken a couple of them while flying. Jokes apart, let’s get started with your curious question
Please switch off your mobile phones in other electronics as we are preparing to take off.
It is a standard statement in almost every Airplane before it takes off.
The argument has been there forever that the mobile signals can interfere with the radio signal used by the Pilots to communicate with the air traffic control.
But let me tell you it doesn’t happen anymore. I have kept my phone turned on throughout the takeoff, even for the period of the entire flight, sometimes, which is more than 2 hours, nothing happened.
I have even tried staying connected on a call while the plane was taking off, which state connected for a while, maybe 2 to 3 minutes, after that the call gets disconnected because of the obvious reasons.
There is no network in the air. Perhaps the mobile network towers are designed in a way to throw signals downwards to the surface of Earth, where the people use mobile phones.
The average altitude a plane flies is between 33000 feet to 45000 feet. So, getting the network signals is out of the question.
So the only way to make a call from a flight while it is in the air, above the clouds, is that the airplane must have inflight wi-fi.
Now, inflight wi-fi isn’t available in every airplane that is in operation. So your chances of making a phone call from the flight are next to none.
But even if the airplane has got inflight wi-fi, your Telecom operator must have the facility of making wi-fi calls so that you can get connected to other networks.
Some Telecom operators, such as adl embedded solutions inc do this kind of feature and charge a premium. If you Telecom operator isn’t the one who supports this feature, your next best option is app-based calls.
Mostly all the Instagram messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Skype offer video and voice calls over the internet.
These are the ways a regular passenger can make calls from a commercial flight while it is flying.
