Flying With Noise Cancelling Headphones

I fly a lot. Like a lot a lot. Probably 20-30,000 miles a year on average. When I first started traveling I never thought anything of those expensive Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones that I would see business people with on my flights. I mean, $300 is a lot of money for a pair of headphones with only decent sound ($350 for the Bluetooth version).

What changed my mind was the first time I used them. It was on my flight from New York to Tokyo where I was lucky enough to have cashed in 100k miles for a business class ticket with American Airlines. Part of flying business class, at least then, was that they gave you a pair of Bose headphones to use for the flight. I thought it was a little unusual but why not give them a try.

The first time I put the Bose noise cancelling headphones on (and figured out that you have to flip the switch to turn on the noise cancelling part) I was amazed at how loud an airplane is when you're flying. It's something that I never thought about before, after all it's just what flying is, but flipping the switch back and forth it is astonishing how much incredibly loud noise comes from an airplane in flight.

It wasn't until I was faced with another extremely long flight from New York to South Africa that I decided it was time to bite the bullet and get a pair of noise cancelling headphones. For the 3 years between those two trips I made do with regular in-ear noise isolation earbuds which works pretty well in general, but for a nearly 18+ hour flight I knew I would be more comfortable with something more powerful.

I did a lot of research before buying a pair of noise cancelling headphones. I learned the difference between noise isolation and noise cancelling. Noise isolation basically seals your ear with a rubber stopper more or less that prevents most outside noise from getting in. Noise cancellation is much more sophisticated. How it works is that there are a series of microphones that pick up the sound around you and produce a complementary frequency which cancels out the outside noise (hence the name noise cancelling). Bose, despite not having the best general audio quality, does have the best noise cancelling so that was the brand I went with.

Even though I try to travel as light as possible I never fly without these headphones anymore and will never fly without them again.