IN FLIGHT DETECTION

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve the problem of a mobile device incapable of detecting whether it is in flight and thus incapable of automatically disable or enable its in-flight mode setting.SOLUTION: An apparatus and method for detecting whether a mobile device is in flight based on sensor measurements from a 3-dimensional accelerometer are presented. For example, embodiments estimate a direction of gravity and non-gravity acceleration, separate this non-gravity acceleration into a vertical and horizontal components, and then test the estimated acceleration to determine whether the mobile device is experiencing sufficient vertical acceleration to warrant an in-flight determination.