Airplane mode - will it let me avoid roaming charges during international travel?

I am a new iPhone user and have already found it indispensable. We are traveling to Europe next week. To my vehement protest, my husband wanted me to leave the iPhone at home for fear of 1) incurring a huge bill from AT&T afterwards, given my penchant for being a data hog (google maps and news junkie), and 2) chance of losing the device through theft or carelessness. Instead, he'd like to get a couple of cheap local unlocked phones for communication while on the road.

I'm looking for a compromise solution - Yes to using a 3rd party phone locally, but also bring my iPhone, and use it only when wireless is available. There's not much I can do about #2 except to be extra careful. Here's my question: Can I put the phone in the Airplane Mode (but keep the wireless on for when we are within data range) without incurring extra charges?

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Hmm I tuned my airplane mode on when I got by the Mexico border cause I got a message saying they wild charge me ten bucks a meg.
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An Easy Way to Avoid All Roaming Charges While Travelling Abroad.
While traveling abroad, one thing is always for sure: somebody back home will want to call you. Or you will want to call them. This means you run the risk of spending a fortune on roaming and international phone charges. The good news is that you can now avoid all or most of those expenses. Stanacard, a Manhattan-based company, came up with a simple way to do just that.
If you travel abroad with your regular mobile phone you will have to pay so-called roaming charges to your current provider. You pay for roaming regardless of whether you make or accept a call. Roaming charges may be as high as $3 a minute. Or they may come in the form of a high connection fee. So if you continue using your phone abroad the way you use it at home you may end up paying $200 a day or more.
Until recently, the only sure way to avoid roaming charges was leaving your phone at home. I travel a lot and have tried all sorts of tricks in the past few years to avoid those ridiculous roaming charges.
For example, I tried forwarding my calls to an international number. So far, I haven’t found a mobile company which would be able to do that. Even if there was one, I am sure I’d be hit by high international rates charged for calls forwarded from my mobile phone to the number abroad.
I’ve also made internet calls from smartphones but found it to be a huge pain. In most countries it is impossible to find a WiFi zone, especially a free one. Even if I found one, I’d have to stay in it if I wanted to be able to accept or continue a call.
Of course, if I left my phone at home my family and friends had to pay to call me.
But finally there is a solution to the problem. Stanacard International Forwarding feature lets you forward calls to a number abroad in such a way that you do not have to pay any roaming charges. You still need to pay per minute charges to Stanacard but those are tiny comparing to what you’d have to pay otherwise. And what’s really great is that your loved ones back home don’t have to pay anything extra since they dial your regular mobile phone, as opposed to a foreign number. They don’t even have to know you are abroad.
So here is what you need to do to take advantage of this feature.
1. Open a free account at www.stanacard.com if you don’t have one already.
2. As soon as you arrive to the new country, get a local prepaid mobile phone or SIM card. Try to get one with free incoming and local calls.
3. On the Stanacard website, get a free Smartdial number linked to this foreign number. This is much easier than it sounds and takes about 2 minutes. You will be walked through the process.
4. Forward your home-country mobile to this Smartdial number. The Smartdial number will be in the same zone as your mobile so all calls from your phone cost you whatever you normally pay for local calls, most likely nothing.
Don’t be scared by the idea of buying a local SIM card or phone in a foreign country. This is such a popular thing to do these days that you can usually buy them at the airport where you land. Many phone companies will give you a free phone with free incoming and local calls. They hope you will be spending money on international calls. However, if you are a Stanacard customer and travel to one of the 50 “Stanacard Countries” you will not have to do that. You will be able to call through Stanacard local numbers and pay very low Stanacard rates and no extra fees whatsoever.
Forwarding your mobile to a Smartdial number is also easy. The Stanacard website has instructions on how to do that with major mobile companies.
So enjoy your travels this holiday season and don’t worry about all those unnecessary phone expenses.

The easiest way to avoid international roaming charges is by having a plan that includes international calling/data. Go talk to your AT&T rep, and have them add international coverage to your current plan for the period you'll be traveling. It costs a little bit, but it's MUCH cheaper than international roaming.