The Mobile Dead Zone on Airplanes
Cell reception is bad after boarding because of the way airports are designed.
You stow your bag, settle into your airline seat, and begin swiping away at your phone until takeoff. The signal is sluggish, and the bars of service blink between one and none. Twitter feeds don’t load, email struggles to come through, and texts hang unsent. It’s frustrating—there’s still work to be done, or loved ones to be updated on your progress. But it’s also confusing. The signal was fine just moments ago, in the terminal.
Cellular reception is uniformly awful on airliners parked at gates. But why? The most obvious answers are vaguely conspiratorial: Maybe interference from the wiring or circuitry in the aircraft fuselage plays a part. Or perhaps a magic box in the cockpit somehow interrupts service to dissuade in-flight use. I
