The BBC H2G2 site give, amongst the dangers to the aircraft equipment the following information on the reasons for not using mobile phones of planes,
An aircraft could be carrying 500 cell phones. While passing directly over a city and thus unhindered by buildings, these phones could be in the line-of-sight of hundreds of base stations and could try to register with all of them. This would impose a temporary but extreme load on the network. The speed of the plane passing over the small inner-city cells would also result in an unusually rapid handover from cell to cell, possibly far in excess of the network's design limits.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A6821318
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