I tried two flights today one with just WiFi off and the other in Airplane mode.
The results were much the same with a range of 300M heading towards built up area and 500M in the other.
Some phones it seems also have GPS issues when in Airplane Mode e.g. it does not work which could lead to other issues.
How much would it have cost them to build GPS and barometer sensor into the controller?
Of course in the UK we have the lower transmission power levels making all our flight ranges pretty pathetic.