Originally Posted by BThumme

I will never understand why some people get so upset over a passenger talking to his phone/computer. How is it any different then any other passenger talking? Sure, if they are getting heated on the phone I can understand that, but I don't get what passengers are looking for.

Do they want the plane to be total silence? That will never happen. Is it rude for me to talk to my seatmate (friend or not?) What about passengers casually chatting up others/FA's? Is that okay? If so, where does the line get drawn? I have no issues with someone being on their phone/computer so long as they aren't being loud and obnoxious.

If you don't want to hear people, get a private plane chartered, or since that's out of budget for 99.9% of us, buy a nice pair of noise canceling headphones and you won't have to worry about hearing others.

Originally Posted by jdrtravel

Almost universally, in my experience, people speak much louder when using a phone vs. speaking to the person seated next to them. Personally I can't stand being next to someone on the phone.

Particularly with all of the background noise on a plane (esp. the sound of the plane itself), one would need to speak louder to have an intelligible phone conversation.

If real estate were not such a precious commodity on planes, I would suggest they have phone booth type rooms that people could step into to have a conversation. Perhaps we will see this in the future in J or intl F cabins.