Personally, I am not really looking forward to having yet another source of "noise" while onboard an airplane. I can understand the noise made by very young children. But I surely will not be as forgiving with incessant mobile phone conversations made by adults.
Moving on...
It may happen that mobile phones will soon be allowed but since this technology is relatively new, the price of a phone call would not be cheap.
Which means (I am just guessing here) that passengers in business and first classes would be more likely to gab on their mobile phones. Which means (again, this is another guesstimate) there would be less chatter on economy class. So, in the end, we would have to weigh which is the lesser evil:
Evil 1: comfy seats, big legroom + noisy mobile phone chatter
OR
Evil 2: cramped seats + crying babies
Difficult. Which would you choose?
I'll take Evil 1 if there are no other options.
To be honest, I didn't really think that mobile phones would be that bad until recently on a trip to San Francisco, I had an uncomfortable experience... It was after the plane has landed so people were turning on their phones. But then, a woman behind me called home and, like myself, she had a voice that carried...
So the front half of the plane all got to hear her explain and get frustrated and such as she is describing to someone in her family how her mother didn't take her pills and how she's incapable of doing it herself and someone needs to check up on her and so on.
A very very personal conversation to be sure that just became very public. I know both myself and my travel companion were a bit uncomfortable and concerned...
The last thing I want is to have to hear someone getting fired or having a fight or an argument and such on the flights. I'm used to standard business chatter but when it gets that personal...I'm not sure a plane is the best place to have it.
Saying that though...I'd rather hear that than crying babies....I can always block out conversations with my noise cancelling headphones better than the shriek from a child (^_^)
Posted by: Tim Arai | November 5, 2006 5:53 PM | Permalink to Comment