TORONTO — Contrary to popular belief, leaving your phone on while flying on an airplane will NOT cause it to short-circuit and crash to the ground. So why do flight crews continue to instruct passengers to shut their phones off prior to takeoff?

The real reason is far less dramatic, according to a blog post written by a pilot for AirlineUpdates (via DailyMail). Switching on your phone during the flight, he says, actually does interfere with the aircraft’s communication systems, but not to the point of a crash landing. It simply creates a ‘dit-dit-dit’ noise, similar to when you hold a mobile phone near a set of speakers, that disturbs the plane’s pilots.

“I actually heard such noise on the radio while flying. It is not safety critical, but is annoying for sure,” the pilot writes. He also writes that while a single cell phone may not create a lot of disturbance, it would be very distracting for the pilots if all passengers were to switch on their phones.

We don’t know about you, but distracting the pilots from flying the plane is the LAST thing we want to do. So do everyone a favour and turn off your phone before boarding.