Originally Posted by
Maxwell Smart
But in-flight, the general ambient noise level is higher, and wondering if a person talking on a phone in a normal or soft voice next to you would truly be heard to the point of being annoying? Certainly someone talking loudly/yelling on a phone would be annoying, but what if only talking in a soft voice?
In general it seems like people talk more loudly when talking on a device instead of in person with someone right next to them.
And on a plane they will subconsciously raise their voices even further just to overcome the ambient noise you are talking about.
Now multiply it by both people on either side of you doing it.
After all, there WAS a time when there were airphones at many seats, and I don't recall people getting up in arms about it back then (though given the high cost, I don't think they were actually used much).
Exactly, they were hardly ever used, which is probably why they were discontinued. And I think the cost was on a per-minute basis, so if they were used it was only for important things and people were financially motivated to keep the calls as short as possible. AND it was generally only one phone per set of three seats (at least in Y), further limiting usage.
Totally different animal from free & unlimited for every seat on the whole plane.