Identifying an airliner motion event at a mobile device may utilize, for example, one or more accelerometers, an acceleration feature extractor, and a motion event identification processor. The one or more accelerometers may be configured to output calibrated triaxial accelerometer data. The acceleration feature extractor may be configured to determine scalar acceleration signals from the calibrated triaxial accelerometer data, to filter the scalar acceleration signals to reduce high frequency noise, and to process the filtered scalar acceleration signals to generate an acceleration spread waveform. The motion event identification processor may be configured to compare the acceleration spread waveform to one or more predetermined patterns characteristic of an airliner motion event, and to identify an airliner motion event based on whether the comparing results in a substantial match.