They sure can! But they have to turn them off for take-off and landing. And actually, it's way before actual landing that they will come on and ask that you turn off all electronic equipment. Coming home in January, we had to shut the gameboy off about 30 minutes before we actually landed. And DS had been so busy doing other things that he literally had only turned it on 5 minutes before they told us to shut it off. He wasn't quite 5 and was unimpressed!