If I understand how a cell phone works, it gets a signal from the closest tower and then passes you off to the next tower as you get close to it and then the next. So imagine leaving a place like Atlanta where five planes are taking off and landing every two minutes. Figure another 30 planes under 10,000 feet on approach or departure. That is about 4,350 phones (allowing for 125 passengers per plane). In the air, those phones could be trying to address multiple towers in all directions. This seems like it could potentially create an issue where the phones start skipping all over the grid trying to address all these available signals. A few phones that don't get turned off probably do not affect navigatioin, but if 4,000+ are getting signals from all directions and they are all skipping rapidly from tower to tower, is it possible that all these signals coming from many directions could affect the plane's navigation? And what havoc could this cause to the cell network? I don't kno
