A connection between a user equipment (UE) and an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) can become disrupted due to network-side issues with the IMS, an access network, or a core network. The UE can initiate a watchdog timer to determine when a previously-established IMS connection may be unusable due to such a network-side issue. If the watchdog timer expires, for example because the IMS does not reply to a message sent by the UE before the watchdog timer expires, the UE can toggle an airplane mode on and off. Toggling airplane mode on and off can deactivate and then re-activate a transmission interface of the UE, and cause the UE to establish a new usable connection with the IMS that may not be affected by the network-side issue that disrupted the previously-established IMS connection.