One of the most annoying trends is the friendly air.
There has been an alarming increase in the number of passengers turning on speakerphone mode or watching movies and TV shows without headphones, both on the plane and at the airport.
“At first it irritated me. Then it annoyed me. Then I got angry. Now I’m just baffled,” says Canadian railway foreman Brennan Smith, 43, told the Wall Street Journal as he describes the worsening phenomenon. “I don’t know why they don’t have any registrations. There should be an announcement on the plane.”
Ady Beitler, 43, recalled an instance at Washington Dulles Airport where a fellow passenger bickered with his partner over the phone over a bath towel. They didn’t use a loudspeaker, so the conversation was impossible to ignore and even got Beitler “emotionally invested” in the drama.
So far this year I’ve told six people who were checking things out at an airport that their headphones weren’t plugged in,” one Redditor said. Getty Images
Flyer Tracey Parsons said this phenomenon is worse in the airport gate area and claims she has been exposed to it at almost every airport she has passed through in recent years.
“I don’t want to listen to your phone conversation. I don’t want to listen to both sides,” she said angrily. “I don’t want to watch TikTok with you. I find it baffling; We used to have headphones.”
This annoying trend – whose perpetrators span all age groups and socio-economic classes – does not stop after take-off.
“I’ll probably see it on every flight,” said a flight attendant from a major U.S. airline, noting that a withering look is usually enough to silence entertainment viewers without headphones.
Some believe the trend is due to cheap wired headphones becoming rarer. Getty Images/iStockphoto
Interestingly, not keeping entertainment to oneself seems to be a widespread phenomenon in all kinds of public spaces, from coffee shops to subways. But it might be even worse in the air because, unlike on the subway, passengers can’t simply transfer to another car if a flyer decides to watch “Beat Bobby Flay” at full blast.
To curb the trend, some airlines, such as American Airlines and Alaska Air, are now making announcements asking fliers to use earphones.
Notably, Delta has added an advisory about headphone use at the bottom of the in-flight entertainment page.
Some argue that decorum in general is in a death spiral. Lukas Gojda – stock.adobe.com
There are entire Reddit threads especially for inconsiderate travelers who don’t mind broadcasting both their entertainment and personal phone conversations to their fellow flyers.
“Granted, I fly a lot for work, but so far this year I’ve told six people looking at things in an airport that their headphones weren’t plugged in,” wrote one concerned passenger. ‘The device was there blaring with the headphones plugged in. No idea how they didn’t realize it wasn’t their headphones.
They added: “I have also noticed that almost no one will tell these people. They just sit there looking at each other.”
Unfortunately, confronting offenders can sometimes backfire.
Shannon Black, from Vancouver, Washington, recalled calling a woman who was video chatting over the speakerphone in Delta’s airport lounge in Salt Lake City. She asked if the perpetrator minded using headphones, but they found Black’s suggestion “incredibly rude.”
Some flyers have even claimed that some headphone abstainers do this on purpose in an attempt to provoke a fight. “These days it’s hard to know who’s being a loose cannon or inviting confrontation,” said one poster on Reddit. “I don’t need to be punched or have a gun pulled on me when I ask them, no matter how politely, to please turn the volume down.”
Interestingly enough, the phenomenon coincides with cheap wired headphones becoming less ubiquitous than before. In 2016, Apple removed the iPhone headphone jack to make room for other inputs, with Android following suit.
This forced users to buy wireless headphones for private listening, which meant spending more money and charging another device.
Meanwhile, Neil Cybart, founder of Apple analytics site Above Avalon, attributed this noise pollution from devices to the fact that people are “just watching a lot more video” than before.
Another possible culprit, according to the WSJ, is a general downward trend in decorum, which pervades everything from fashion to the way people communicate with employers in the office.