Safety first? Should air passengers remove headphones when speaking to crew?

Air passenger etiquette has been making the headlines again after a post about interacting with flight crew while wearing headphones or earbuds went viral on social media. Opinions vary between passengers and flight attendants. So, who is right, and how to behave?

According to Redditor sirensslave, reported by The Independent, a Delta crew member on a flight from Salt Lake City to Austin, Texas, “refused to serve anyone unless they fully removed their headphones, not even a one-ear situation, full removal.” The post continued: “I just popped my headphone off my ear on the side closest to him, and he literally ignored me while serving my row, and since the drink cart was right next to me, every time he came back.”

Most respondents on the forum seemed to think the flight attendant’s behaviour was “weird” and a “control thing” – an understandable reaction since, unless rawdogging their flight, many people use time spent in the air to relax with a movie, catch up on their favourite podcast, or listen to an audiobook or music. When flight crew members pass by, they ask, Is it really necessary to fully unplug, especially if one is not interested in any refreshments or other on-board purchases? And what about earbuds that automatically pause when someone speaks?

On one Australian frequent flyer forum, as elsewhere, there were differences of opinion. Some flyers insist that removing headphones to give one’s interlocuter the common courtesy of full attention is a matter of basic manners, though they acknowledge this might be an outdated view. “Call me old-fashioned,” said MEL_traveller, “but I’d rather prefer headphones off when I’m talking to someone or when someone’s talking to me.”

However, others, such as twinaisle, say that not removing headphones is practical, not personal, noting that passengers cannot necessarily predict when meal or drink service will arrive and that often “we have our hands full with taking the tray out, we can’t also pause the program and remove the headphones. Not enough hands!”

But for Patricia Green, a flight attendant with a career spanning the commercial and private sector over 20 years and all class levels, writing for Simple Flying, the issue boils down to safety. Air crew teams are not simply glorified waiters or servers, she insists. Flight attendants go through complex preparation for their role and “take their duties very seriously and will always focus on safety, which is thoroughly rooted in their training. It is very important to follow the instructions of the crew at all times,” she says.

Flight attendants’ requests are, according to Green, always based on safety protocols, not pettiness. Putting one’s seat upright for landing and stowing one’s tray are actions that can save lives by allowing everyone to exit the plane more easily in an emergency, she points out. Ensuring one’s window blind is up allows the flight crew to see outside, letting them know, in case of emergency, what the exterior conditions are before asking passengers to deplane. Likewise, ensuring passengers can hear safety instructions, which may come unexpectedly, is paramount. Importantly, though flight crew are trained to observe human behaviour closely, they are not psychic, and they cannot necessarily know if earbud settings are configured to pause automatically, so they may well be persistent in asking passengers to pay proper attention.

Given these explanations, the behaviour of the attendant on the Delta flight mentioned in the Reddit thread does seem odd. If having one headphone in is putting the plane and people’s lives in jeopardy, perhaps the steward should have pointed that out. Ultimately, passengers must rely not only on their own sense of etiquette but also on the flight crew’s knowledge to let them know what is acceptable and safe.

Meanwhile, on other forms of transport, NOT using one’s headphones can get one into trouble, as this French rail passenger found out.