When you board a plane, there are a few things you need to do, some of which are automatic. You quickly get to your seat, stow your carry-on baggage either in the overhead bin above you or under the seat in front of you, sit down and buckle yourself in. Then you secure any devices you brought with you and make sure you put them in flight mode if possible before takeoff.

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Frequent flyers may already have a basic understanding of how this feature works. When you enable Airplane Mode on a cell phone, all of the device’s wireless capabilities are immediately turned off to prevent them from potentially interfering with the aircraft’s electronic operations. Turning the feature on primarily affects the phone’s cellular connection—essentially preventing your device from sending or receiving voice calls and text messages—as well as its ability to act as a personal hotspot. In some cases, this may also disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but you can manually turn these back on to enjoy in-flight connectivity without leaving Airplane Mode.

Although it’s primarily intended to be turned on before takeoff, you don’t necessarily have to be on a plane to use Airplane Mode. It can be a quick and easy way to disconnect from the Internet or even fix connectivity issues on your mobile device. The question is, does Airplane Mode hide your smartphone’s location? Most cell phones don’t turn off GPS or location services when Airplane Mode is turned on. To understand why, you need to know how GPS works on a mobile device.

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GPS stands for Global Positioning System and consists of several navigation satellites that constantly orbit the earth. These satellites send out signals that your mobile phone can receive. Based on these signals, the receiver (i.e. your phone) calculates its distance to at least four GPS satellites. Based on the distance, your phone can determine your actual location.

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In this scenario, your mobile device is not sending out any signals, it is simply decrypting the information it receives. Given this feature, and the fact that this feature is primarily intended for use on airplanes, most cell phones do not disable location services while airplane mode is enabled because it does not interfere with the aircraft’s systems. Depending on how the information is used, certain mobile apps that use your location may continue to function as intended while the device is in airplane mode.

Testing has shown that offline navigation via a maps app works in airplane mode, provided you’ve downloaded the data you want in advance. Note that you’ll need a cellular or Wi-Fi connection to access real-time navigation in map areas you haven’t pre-saved. GPS can sometimes be used to locate a person’s phone in an emergency, but it’s important to note that emergency location services may require an unobstructed view of the sky for them to work.

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While it is true that GPS works independently of your phone’s other wireless connections and can be used to track your location in some cases, the general answer to this depends on the situation and the method someone is using to try to locate your mobile device.

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For example, testing has shown that Apple’s Find My feature via iCloud.com/find doesn’t work while an iPhone is in Airplane Mode. It may only show the last time the iPhone was connected to the Internet. However, if an iPhone is marked as lost or connects to a Wi-Fi network while in Airplane Mode, it can report a location via Find My.

Similarly, Google’s Find My Device feature cannot detect the location of a mobile device that is set to airplane mode. However, once connected to Wi-Fi, the device’s location should be detected, even if airplane mode is on.