Flight attendant explains whether Airplane Mode is actually necessary on planes

A flight attendant has explained the important reason why people are asked to put their devices on Airplane Mode when flying.

Usually when this is asked of people cabin crew are met with groaning teenagers and a couple of eye rolls from parents hoping that YouTube could entertain their youngsters for the duration of the flight; but there's a key reason people have to do this when traveling by plane.

Using this feature turns off a device's all wireless signals, meaning things like cellular signal and GPS are no longer available.

A lot of people might wonder why this is necessary when flying, and Mandy Smith, former cabin crew for Virgin Atlantic, has explained why.

"If you're away that Airplane Mode needs to be on, please do so," said Mandy.

There's an important reason why you need to put your cellphones on Airplane Mode (Getty Stock)

Sharing the important reason why, she said: "This is to prevent us losing signal from a beacon."

Going on to explain further, she told LADBible Stories: "Say a radio beacon would be there and you're coming into land or taking off, [the beacon] would signify where the ground is and the ground level. The aircraft is following that beacon."

Mandy went on: "Any other radio signals such as mobile phones, even Furbies – they used to ban Furbies back in the day – are not allowed because they could interfere with that signal."

Something else Mandy discussed what the fact that pilots have to eat separate meals while flying a plane.

That's not so they can give separate reviews not the meals however, but incase one of them happened to get food poisoning.

She said: "If one has the chicken, the other one has to have the fish. They always decide that between themselves before they tell us what they want."

"That's incase either of them has food poisoning," Mandy revealed. "Obviously we don't want both of them throwing up... not that our food is ever bad but, you know, it's just a precautionary measure."

Mandy also noted that they're unable to eat their dinner while still sat behind the main console because the last thing they need is to drop half of their chicken tikka over the one of the main ways they control the aircraft's systems.

Can you imagine hearing that over the tannoy? "Sorry folks, we're having to make an emergency landing because Dave dropped spaghetti bolognese over the plane's console."

You'd be pretty p*ssed off...