While it’s certainly not the biggest problem we’re dealing with at the moment, the number of people who think everyone else needs to hear what they’re listening to is too damn high. It feels like everywhere you go, someone’s taking a call on speakerphone, watching a video at full volume, or blasting their music with zero regard for anyone else. So, while United Airlines is far from perfect, I could not be happier to inform you that the Washington Post reports United is taking a stand against rude passengers and threatening to kick anyone off the plane who listens to audio without headphones.
Technically, it was already United’s policy that passengers needed to use headphones when listening to audio, but the airline recently updated its contract of carriage to include “passengers who fail to use headphones while listening to audio or video content” on the list of those eligible to be removed from their flights. In an email, United Airlines spokesperson Josh Freed told the Washington Post, “We’ve always encouraged customers to use headphones when listening to audio content — and our Wi-Fi rules already remind customers to use headphones. It seemed like a good time to make that even clearer by adding it to the contract of carriage.”
Hopefully, the flight attendants won’t demand an emergency landing and criminal charges if you accidentally play a couple seconds of audio. Mistakes happen, and that would be a disaster for scheduling. But it’s still encouraging to see a major airline take a more aggressive stand against those who are rude enough to expect other people to listen to the YouTube video they’re watching while trapped in a metal tube six miles in the sky.
Other airlines’ policies
Currently, it doesn’t look like any other U.S. airlines have put headphone use in their contract of carriage, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have pro-headphone policies. And while they may not explicitly list removal from the flight as a possible consequence, it’s always important to remember that flight attendants are also basically sky cops, and if you piss one off not listening to their instructions, they can still kick you off the flight–no arguments, no appeals, you’re done.Â
Frontier appears to come the closest to United’s example, putting a headphone requirement in the section of its contract that deals with carry-on baggage, but it doesn’t list consequences for ignoring the rule, and Frontier didn’t respond to the Washington Post‘s request for a comment. Meanwhile, Delta lists its headphone policy in the entertainment section of its website and has taken to handing out headphones to passengers to encourage their use, and Southwest’s website displays similar language.Â
In a statement sent to the Washington Post, Southwest spokesperson Chris Perry mentioned that even though the airline’s contract of carriage doesn’t threaten music-blasting passengers with removal, the requirement that passengers do what flight attendants tell them to still trumps all. “Our contract does include passengers not adhering to crew member instructions, including those about use of personal electronic devices,” Perry wrote in an email. “Thus, a passenger would be expected to adhere to instructions about headphones.”
Regardless of which airline you fly, hopefully more aggressive enforcement finally puts an end to this problem once and for all. And maybe once that’s taken care of, we can move on to eliminating the latest scourge to hit commercial airlines — those jerks who think it’s okay to take phone calls on the plane.
