nunyo Before I do something irreversibly stupid, are you saying that this would put a password on the entire Settings app? So every time I need to change any setting, I need to enter a password? That would definitely reduce the incidence of accidentally disabling airplane mode, but I would prefer to await some less intrusive mitigation from the devs. But thanks for letting us know about this option.
Minimal version would be printing the toggle text in red, or moving the toggle down to the very last option in the "Network & Internet" menu. The latter wouldn't interfere with people who don't care about this issue, as the drawer button is the usual way to disable airplane mode.