Elliott Confidential

Elliott Confidential

Are you becoming the passenger everyone hates?

By removing seatback screens, airlines unleashed a cacophony of leaky headphones and bright laptops. Here's how not to be part of the problem.

Christopher Elliott's avatar
Christopher Elliott
Sep 07, 2025
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On a recent flight from San Francisco to New York, Luca Dal Zotto found himself sitting next to a noisy airline passenger.

It wasn't what he said that was noisy, but what he did. The man opened his laptop and began watching John Wick 3 with his screen at 100 percent brightness.

"The audio was booming out of his thin headphones," remembers Del Zotto.

Del Zo…

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