In my 6 months or so of having the Framework16, I have only pressed that accidentally one time. As others have said, this has been a standard feature on laptops for a pretty long time now.
You may not be used to the recent trend of making the alternate function of the F-keys the default. To that I say, just turn it off so it is like your previous laptops (press fn+f-key for alternate functions) if that’s what you are used to.
Yes it can be disabled. OP might not be aware of this.
I had a switch like this on my (now 10+ years old) Dell laptop. as a very fidgety person I was turning my wifi off at least once a week by mistake 
On older ThinkPads, there were two mechanisms for toggling flight mode:
The OP’s issue (if I’m not mistaken) is specifically how ‘easy’ it is to toggle flight mode with a key press of a ‘single key’. I agree it’s an issue if the keyboard is in media key mode (what’s the proper term for it?) instead of F-key mode. For this reason, I Fn-Lock my keyboard, so F10 is F10.
Going back to Point 2 (above). ThinkPad’s implementation was that it gives you a user-configuration of “toggle wifi” or “prompt” for action. The Prompt (below) will give you a choice of toggle wifi, and toggle bluetooth.
Here’s a screenshot of that configuration:
On FL13, it’s the lack of user configuration that’s impacting user experience.
For ThinkPads and some Latitudes (IIRC), this UX implementation is history, been there, done that. Framework just isn’t there with the EC, nor the software yet…and didn’t learn from the trailblazers that went before. Still waiting for those quality of life improvements from Framework.
And then, on the Dell Rugged Latitudes (e.g. Rugged Extreme), their flight mode is not just wifi off, bluetooth off, but also LEDs off, keyboard backlight off, display panel off. It’s “stealth” mode.
…and so, I’ve been asking if we’re going to get an Fn-Lock LED indicator on the keyboard…so we can know for sure if I press on F10…do I get F10…or Flight mode toggle. But that request has been ignored …I don’t even know where that is…maybe a v2 keyboard we have yet to hear about?
However these two options Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are readily accessible via the Gui unlike the FN and ICON options.
I have the Bluetooth off 99% of the time and only enable it when actually using it. Like on my phone I have no desire to keep it open nor to use the power.
I agree with @JL_Framework and have tried a lot of different solutions to “disable” the default action of the F10 key but with little success
My main issue is that I use devenv.sh and when I run devenv up to launch all the processes, the keybinding to exit the TUI is… F10.
Which means I press that key way more often than the common user and often forget to also press Fn 
I am personally fine (and actually prefer) to type rfkill block / rfkill unblock whenever I need to toggle WiFi / BT than using the F10 key.
I’m unfortunately not knowledgeable enough to “hack” the firmware, but would gladly give it a go if I can get help from experienced people?
I’m not saying that we should copy the idea from 15+ years ago and copy it. I’m saying there’s a lesson to be learnt…1. User-configurable, and, 2. Not a single-key.
Then adopt and fine tune it for year 2020+.
There should be a way to disable this button (maybe as a setting in the BIOS?).
Why? Winter is coming, the laptop gets warm and I got cats. Guess, what’s happening 
It’s really annoying, getting back to the laptop and realize, that network connections dropped, as the cat enabled airplane mode.
Hi and welcome to the forum.
If you search you will find this posts on how this can be disabled, so I’m not sure why you would post here.
If you don’t have the inclination or time to search soon I’ve just found this, have a look to se it that helps
I’ve already seen a lot of possible workarounds (including making changes to the EC firmware) and none of them are a real fix.
The same is true for the link you’re mentioning. I’ve already switched the FN lock and, guess what, my cat is still able to enable airplane mode accidentally.
If there’s a better place to phrase my concern about it, I wasn’t able to find it and happily accept any redirect
You’re not alone.
I’m in the IT dept. Lots and lots of my end users called me for help over the years, only to find out that they had accidentally toggled airplane mode. I’m happier now that fewer laptops have hardware airplane mode switches or key combos.
It is also common to get calls where they had disabled the microphone or webcam via hardware privacy switches or shutters. Ugh.
I’m one who would demand the complete removal of any airplane mode key on the keyboard (I wouldn’t even want to have them change it to a key combo). It’s easy enough to use the OS to disable the wifi and bluetooth. Best part for me is that I can see, diagnose, and correct disabled wifi and bluetooth in the OS via remote support software, but I can’t easily deal with hardware or BIOS-based switches. In those cases, I have to talk the end user through it on the phone.
You’d be surprised–I’m in IT and I get at least two calls a year from an end user who accidentally hit the webcam/microphone privacy switch.
Usually it ends up being a huge kerfuffle too. They often discover their mistake when in “the most important Zoom meeting of the year!” and of course panic hard and call me frantically while the other Zoom participants wait impatiently. I think the social pressure of being put on the spot turns off their brains such that they can’t simply look up and see the indicator that the privacy switch is engaged.
I get why mfgs put the hardware privacy switches in, but it is really hard for us IT techs to talk the end users through diagnosing the issue when they’re panicking. If it’s software-only, what I can do is quickly remote into their machine and fix it for them, then verify everything’s working with the Zoom meeting. The end user feels better (since they can just sit back and leave it entirely up to us techs) and I get it fixed faster. I’d ban all hardware cut-off switches if I could, at least on our corporate computers.
To Framework: What are the chances that the FW13 could also get a QMK-based keyboard?
It seems cool but the opportunities for trolling if someone else figures this out are… concerning.
Maybe read up on this before you ask as you are not the first and then direct such a request to any existing topic on QMK rather than expand yet another topic to have posts about such
Would be really nice if the OS had some way of notifying you that you were in airplane mode…
What OS? Windows and Ubuntu have icons showing the state
and then a single simple tap on the F10 and you are cosmic again
So… I just need to let my cat know, that it’s her fault for pressing this button…
Seriously, it’s not about the existence of this button, it’s about making it configurable in a way, that it can be turned off. Like a lot of other manufacturers are doing it.
Besides that, this button is working, even if the laptop is locked. I wouldn’t have any issues, if this wouldn’t be the case, as I’m locking my laptop everytime I’m leaving it, because of my cats.
In that case, the proper place would be in EC firmware: add a BIOS option to disable airplane key entirely OR add a key-combo to prevent its accidental pressing, such as Ctrl-Airplane or Ctrl-Alt-Airplane (assuming F row is toggled so that key is not F10 at the time).
Somehow, though, I bet your cats would still manage to press Ctrl AND Airplane at the same time, so a complete disable option is probably better.
No. This is the appropriate thread to add yet another request for QMK on the FW13 because it shows yet another good reason to do it.
If I go add my voice to those other threads, it will be drowned out.
This Airplane key issue is a very legitimate reason to allow customization of the FW13 keyboard. It doesn’t even have to be QMK. It could be some other configurator.
The Airplane key issue is one reason I am not buying FW13s or recommending them as fleet laptops, even though they would make great fleet laptops due to parts interchangeability. The last thing I need is to increase the number of end user calls desperately wondering why they have no network access.
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