Yes, a more likely scenario IMO. We know the phone was turned off between 10pm and 11pm, as his mum rang unanswered at 10 and it was off when she tried again at 11. To me, that suggests he turned it off as a reaction to the 10pm call, i.e. so he no longer had to think about whether to take or ignore her calls or so as not to be disturbed.
At that point if he needs to download maps or whatever for later, airplane mode would work. It seems he was still in London at that point, as he doesn't arrive at Epping Forest until gone midnight, unless there was a stop on the way, of course. But either way, he would turn it off or to airplane long before his arrival on this piece of CCTV so would not have had it turned on to navigate there. Alternate sims etc would reflect a level of forward planning that IMO would have seen him turn his phone off/swap over when or before he left home, which he did not do.
That said, I would have thought his provider would be able to tell the difference between off and airplane mode (and they said it was off). Also I'm sure someone on the Sarah Everard threads said that location data is still available for phones in airplane (
@infinit maybe?). But probably that data would only be available to the police and the phone's status may have changed before they stirred their stumps.
jmo