Taxi, takeoff and landing are the most critical parts of a flight. If something goes wrong and you can't hear instructions, chaos etc because your distracted with your music then you are a danger to yourself and your seatmates around you.

Is that actually an official position though? I've only ever heard it as post hoc rationalization. There might be a bit of sense to it, but on the other hand, it's not hard to jostle someone into paying attention, as I'm sure your neighbors would. They don't prevent you from going to sleep before takeoff or landing, and that's at least as difficult a context switch.

Nor do they forbid you from being deaf during takeoff. They may ask you to change seats, so perhaps it is reasonable to ask that people sitting in those particular seats not have headphones on, but otherwise listening to music seems fine to me.

At least in Canada, you're only allowed to have headphones on if they're earbuds (easy to quickly remove) and connected to the in-flight sound system (so you still hear announcements). I haven't paid attention to the onboard safety dance in ages, so I don't recall what it is elsewhere.

Justification being that earbuds don't get in the way as much as headphones.

There is literally no end to the inanity of bureaucracy.

My in-ear monitors are much more difficult to remove (not to mention get in) than headphones.

If something goes wrong, you're going to take your earbuds out well before you have a chance to actually do anything.

Agreed. Landing and takeoff are the most stressful parts of the flight. I need to be jamming out during those times to maintain a level of calmness.

And it's not like if something goes wrong I won't notice. They'll probably be a big thud or other loud noise to get my attention.

They want your attention in case something goes wrong.

I understand this argument, but I've never seen anyone be asked to take out earplugs or stop reading their book to listen to the preflight briefing. It's silly policy with silly justifications.

It's silly until your plane skids sideways on the runway, requires an emergency evacuation, and you're the idiot in the exit row who has no idea what to do because you can't be bothered to give a shit about it.

It's silly when the plane is almost parked at the gate, everybody stands up, and then the plane jolts to a stop against the blocks, causing a whole plane full of people to fall all over each other and get hurt because they couldn't sit down for another ten seconds, until the bell rang, like they were told to.

It's silly when the cabin door opens at 10,000 feet after takeoff, nearly sucking out passengers who, thank god, decided not to ignore the "keep your seatbelt fastened" warnings (the plane descended/slowed down and the attendants were able to get the door closed. The flight continued to Germany without stopping).

Hey, you know that live/die seat up/down joke? Turns out it's not about you; it's about not making it difficult for the people in the row behind you to evacuate.

Can you imagine the sighs and groans of the first-world aggrieved, if they were instructed to temporarily cease their addictions?

You've managed to completely miss my point.

If the policy were about making sure that people were paying attention, then they would interrupt people sleeping, reading dead tree books, wearing earplugs, or doing anything else that takes their attention off of the attendant. They don't.

The policy has been retconned into being about attention, but the claim that it's about paying attention is belied by actual behavior.

Wow. This is one of the most melodramatic and disconnected-from-reality comments I've ever seen on HN. And that's saying something, recently.

>It's silly until your plane skids sideways on the runway,

Um, so we're to believe it's the headphones that caused this? Most likely if the plane is skidding all over and there's a major emergency, the headphones aren't going to prevent someone from noticing. I'd be far more worried about sleepy passengers or something. In fact, in your scenarios, you wouldn't even be in an exit row, as you'd be apparently too disconnected from reality to verbally say OK to their request for assistance if needed prior to takeoff.

You really think if all of these is happening and you'd have no idea what's going on? And of course, for the first time flyers, it's still a good idea to listen to what they are talking about (they'd anyway do it). But those who are flying almost everyday, the instructions are not changing regularly. Who listens to them anyway on a regular basis?

Agreed it's a silly policy. Anecdotally I was asked to remove my headphones during a flight I took about three weeks ago. My headphones are Etymotic mc3 which I use as earplugs during takeoff and landings. I was sitting in an exit row across from a flight attendant who was facing me in her jumpseat. She had no problem with me wearing them (she could see they weren't connected to my iPod), but the head flight attendant came over and told me to remove them for takeoff.

As the engines were throttling up for take off, I put my fingers in my ears to (I'm an acoustical consultant and my livelihood depends on my ears so I'm a stickler for protecting my hearing) - the FA sitting across from me saw me do that and told me to go ahead and put my headphones back in.

if something goes wrong, I'm pretty anyone would take their headphones off!

This is all total nonsense, cell phones don't interfere with pilot communications and unless you put all the cellphones right next to the radios which are of course in a big shielded box up front!