Travel essentials: Good headphones with airline adaptor

Back in the good ol' days, long flights were a lot more difficult than they are now because you were starved for entertainment. I don't know which airline introduced it first but these days it is extremely common for virtually all airlines to have private entertainment screens even in coach for all passengers. This will include hundreds of films and tv-show that certainly help to pass the time.

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_{The first time I saw this on a 10+ hour flight, I was just elated}

The problem you run into is that the headphones that the airline provides for your are really really awful. I would say that they are even painful to wear. The airlines were never going to give you something good that you could potentially steal so I can understand why they do this. What I do not understand is why they have the strange 2-prong plug for the headphones. I would imagine it is a durability issue and limits the ability for a customer to accidentally break the connection.

There is actually a very easy workaround for this though, and most people don't know about it or if they do, they don't take advantage of it.

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These things end up getting called a lot of different thing but basically you can do a search for airline headphone adaptor and have a lot of different options. No matter which one you choose though, it is going to be dead cheap.

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This one is made by Bose and generally speaking, Bose stuff tends to be rather "high end" so if they are charging a mere $8 for it, you can probably get a generic one for a couple dollars. There are also bluetooth options that are around $20 for people that are super fussy and can't be bothered with having a headphone cable in their way.

I don't know why it never occurred to me to look for a product like this but then one day I was on a flight and saw someone using one. I knew from that point forward that I was not going to be subjected to the horrible one-size-definitely-does-NOT-fit-all headphone that the airline passes out in those unnecessary plastic bags.

It might be the best $10 I have spent in my travels as far as airline comfort is concerned and they are available just about anywhere. Stores that I have been to tend to not have them in stock so you will likely need to order it online but well, we order everything online these days anyway so this probably wont be much of a change for most people.

At such a low price, there really isn't much reason to not get this product even though you will likely only use it a couple of times a year. For me, the problem was making sure that I store it somewhere that I wasn't going to lose it and just put it in a box with my other "travel essentials." Unless you enjoy losing your mind while searching for something in your house that is the size of a peanut, I would suggest you do the same.