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Don't Lose Your Earbuds on the Plane

Published by FlyingWith

1 min readText updated

Airline and government rules change. Check your airline's current rules before you travel.

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Quick answer

Take your earbuds out and put them back in their case before you fall asleep. If one does fall into the seat, tell a flight attendant instead of moving an electric seat around to look for it.

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Losing an earbud on a plane is easy, annoying, and — if you go looking for it the wrong way — worth taking seriously.

Part of: Flying for the First Time, Flying with Anxiety, Flying for Business

General advice: applies wherever you fly

Where a lost earbud ends up

One of the easiest things to lose on a plane is a wireless earbud. You fall asleep with your AirPods in, your head moves, and one disappears between the seat and the wall or somewhere underneath you. Then everyone is looking for a tiny white earbud while people are trying to get off the plane.

General advice: applies wherever you fly

Case them before you sleep, and tell the crew if one drops

If you're going to sleep, take them out and put them back in their case. If you really want to sleep with headphones, over-ear headphones are much harder to lose. And if an earbud does fall somewhere inside the seat, don't start moving an electric seat around trying to find it. Tell a flight attendant. A tiny earbud can get caught inside the seat mechanism and crushing a lithium-battery device isn't something you want happening inside an airplane.

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