what constitute "turning off a device" on an aircraft ?

I have been recently on an aircraft, and on taking off I put my device on flight mode. However somebody sitting next to me said that is not enough. It ought to be " off" completly which is equivalent to shut down on a computer. I am not sure how you can do that on a mobile phone, other than putting it in flight mode. Any ideas on this subject. In fact I was told to turn off my kindle ebook. I cannot sea how an ebook can disturb an aircraft.

I would certainly turn off the wireless side of an e-book reader. Should be sufficient.

If Nokia, Apple, whatever, were selling phones with their "Aircraft mode" feature yet when turned on still caused problems with aircraft I think we would have heard about it by now.

It sounds like the passenger you were sitting next to was just being a busybody.

I guess what they probably meant was put it in flight mode then power it down totally and/or remove battery, as opposed to put it in flight mode and play angry birds, or whatever.

It's a bit like the mobile phones at petrol stations thing isn't it.

It ought to be " off" completly which is equivalent to shut down on a computer. I am not sure how you can do that on a mobile phone,

Err, turn the whole thing off, as in switch off.

As long as your device was in "Flight Mode" then it should be fine.

The somebody who was sitting next to you was just being a busybody as Pipexer mentioned.

That's why Flight Mode present on most modern portable devices - It disables all of its communication technologies (3g .etc) and its WiFi capability so it doesn't interfere with Aircraft equipment.

As long as it is in this mode, it won't make a difference whether if it's on or off because it doesn't have the ability to transmit or receive any data or cause a disturbance to anything on the aircraft (Apart from maybe certain people who get over-worried about such things and don't know how they work).

If it was such a bad thing, then I'm sure we would have seen numerous articles over the internet every day regarding such an issue.

I regularly travel on FlyBe and this is part of their take off announcement. You are supposed to put the device into flight mode and then turn the device off before take off. When the seat belts sign goes off, you can then turn the device on obviously still in flight mode. This strikes me as ridiculous.

To be fair to the airlines the taking off is not being "in flight" so you can see why different rules apply.

One day, during a short delay waiting for take off, the pilot said that he had been a passenger on a earlier flight and he had sat up the back. He said he was shocked at how many people simply ignored the announcement and kept their devices on. He was quite insistent that the rules should be followed.

Have had the same on most flights I have been on this year. Turn to flight mode, then physically off for takeoff and landings.

I've had different experiences based on the airline.

Last year I went to America on Virgin Atlantic. "Airplane mode" was not sufficient and they wanted the devices completely off.

Thomas Cook a week ago to Spain were quite happen with that mode and didn't require the devices completely off.

Possibly just a misunderstanding, or that some airlines just want to be safer than sorry, and remove any possibility of the mode not being correctly applied.

Matt