Originally Posted by
davisew
Won't happen, for two reasons:
1. The 120V outlets in aircraft aren't "live" until a proper-fitting plug is fully inserted (and also have safety circuitry that will shut them down if you plug in something that draws too much juice, so sorry, no running a vacuum cleaner in 12B).
2. Even if you managed to get the plug all the way in to a live outlet (like at home), nothing would happen, because you're not completing a circuit. All you would have managed to do would be to charge the entire headphone assembly to 120V (assuming you picked the live side of the outlet to jam the plug into). In order to see sparks, melting, fire, etc. current would have to be flowing, which would require connecting some other part of the headphones to something that is grounded (or at a different potential for you technical types).
Dave -
The headphones they use in BE on the 757 are the ones that have two 1/8" jacks. God knows why, but that's what they use. So, she had one jack in the side of the outlet that was at +120v and another jack in the side of the outlet that was at 0v (relative). Not sure how the headphones are wired internally, but that's damned scary. What you describe in 1) sounds plausible though.