Phnuff, I was just pointing out, perhaps badly, that whatever the airlines say about phones, the cell phone companies really don't want people using phones in aircraft either.
Yes phones 'hop' channels, and adjacent base stations never use the same channels [goes against the whole design philosophy of 'cell' phones], but the whole network is designed on the basis of phones being at or near ground level. The base stations often have surprisingly little spare capacity - they're typically designed for 1 - 10% phone usage, as people discover when they ring their friends at midnight on New Years eve
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As for the attenuation caused by being in an aluminium tube, dunno what that is, but the phone tries its hardest to overcome it by cranking its power up. Hence a phone which should be 'visible' to no more than 4 or 5 base stations all using different channels, suddenly is seen by hundreds of base stations, many using the same channels which are all blocked by the call, and this does put a lot of extra strain on the system. If airlines allowed people to use phones on aircraft entire networks would have to be upgraded and we'd all pay even more for our calls.