You're on your commute, lost in your thoughts, when another passenger boards the bus with their phone turned up to the max. You can hear every random TikTok they watch for the next 10 minutes. Nothing offensive, just annoyingly frantic bursts of sound without context that make your brain itch and your cortisol levels spike. Except you're not on a bus, you're on a plane. And it's not 10 minutes, it's the next three hours.
United Airlines just updated its Contract of carriage policy in a bid to make this horror scenario a thing of the past. It now reserves the right to refuse transport to "Passengers who fail to use headphones while listening to audio or video content."
