Don't rely on the airplane mode to simulate no network availability
I tried to use the airplane mode system setting to simulate network failure/shutdown, but it's not reliable because not all Android APIs support it and debugging stops since no tcp port can be forwarded to the machine hosting the emulator. I also need to add a special permission which mustn't be there for production builds, complicating the build system.
(from redmine: created on 2014-01-28, closed on 2014-03-20)