Originally Posted by
xzh445
1987. HNL-LAX. Redeye. Two from the last row. Middle seat 2-5-2. Full boat. Holding 10 month old lap rider. Oh yeah. 1987...
smoking section. I’ll take 2019 any day.
AWESOME earbuds rankourabu. !!!
(as I recall) there were two pronged jack in the armrests. Speaker(s) behind the jacks. Those little tubes literally “piped” the music up to the ear pieces. (Think stethoscope)
Originally Posted by
rustykettel
I believe the later ones were all black? I remember needing to pay for them as the FA went around distributing them.
Originally Posted by
747FC
These were headphones. State of the art at the time
Channeled sound waves through hollow plastic tubing into the auditory canals of user's ears. No electironic components. Used by all major airlines I flew. Useful for listening to the one movie that played at a time, either on a screen that was pulled down over the center bulkhead, or--later--on Cathode-Ray Tube TVs mounted on the ceilings. There might be a few music channels to listen, namely classical, easy-listening, and country. And, on UA, Channel 9.
As was stated, these were pneumatic headsets. The tubing was plastic so different airlines had different colors. IME, the eartips were usually an uncomfortable rubber rather than the foamy ones you see in the picture. As 747FC says, the picture was generally projected onto a screen that dropped down or was pulled down over the center bulkhead. The channel selector was usually a dial. The headsets were free on a long-haul (at least they were on Pan Am). The picture and sound couldn't compare to what we have today but movies were fabulous in an era when you were lucky to have a 19-inch standard definition TV with mono speaker.