Well,the nature of my day job calls for a good deal of travelling. There was once I had to fly from Dallas, Texas to LA for 3 hours before taking another flight to Hong Kong (and back) in 2 days! Just for a crucial business seminar. Although I love the duty travel, trust me, flying continuously for 20 hours straight can really be quite exhausting. Especially if you don't always have the luxury of travelling on the more expensive class class. The long hours. And not to mention the never-ending hissing of the aircraft engines. It just affects you sometimes.



Looking at the situation, it's probably destined that I'll have to bear with the noise pollution on the plane. Pretty much as long as I'm required to travel. But a colleague's recommendation altered all that. He advocated getting a set of Bose Quiet Comfort noise cancelling headphones on flight. It wasn't cheap but well, for the pleasure of the flying experience I go through now, it was definitely deserving of it!

Noise Cancelling Headphones - What's That?

They are simply audio phones that use technology to do away with ambient noise through the use of active noise control. Using a microphone and electronic circuitry, an anti-noise acoustic wave with a polarity opposite of the one hitting the microphone is produced. That eventually removes the noise within the confined volume of the earphone.

One concern is that an over the headphone works much more effectively than the in-ear smaller earpieces. That probably means, people who like to listen to the music while doing other things may need to get another set of regular phones from the ones they bring onto the plane. But is the hassle worth it? Definitely!

How It Benefits Jetsetters Like Yourself

From what I can see, the headphones not only allow me to enjoy a pleasant journey, I was also able to savour my favourite music onflight without contending with sound pollution. This is actually a very major concern, as I tend to compete with the noise by raising the music's volume. I wasn't sure what was the effects of that on my hearing but since purchasing the noise cancelling headphones, my tendency to increase the volume had been greatly minimized.

In addition, on certain flights which provide multimedia entertainment such as movies on demand or video games, I find myself easily engaged in the plot or exhilaration without the annoying hissing from the aircraft engine. As a matter of fact, the headphones was so good in cutting back clatter that there were times when the air stewardess had to tap on my shoulder to get my attention.

Frankly, if you ask me whether there's anything I couldn't leave home without, other than my luggage & passport, it has to be my noise cancelling headphones!