They work, they’re simple to set up and use, they’re cheap, and if something goes wrong you can quickly replace the headset.
Let’s say an airline switched to Bluetooth. First, they’d have to upgrade every entertainment console on every plane in their fleet and buy new headsets. That’s expensive. Worse, you’re guaranteed to have problems with the new setup. Bluetooth isn’t as reliable as a wire. There will be incidences where a passenger’s headset doesn’t connect to the console, or does but there’s no audio. The only people to turn to are the flight attendants and they aren’t tech support. 2-pin headsets are easy to use. If something goes wrong they’re either not plugged in or need to be replaced. Both can be easily done by the flight attendants.
Most people are using their personal devices for entertainment these days. And most of these devices use Bluetooth or USB-C now anyway.
So why go through the expense of updating the old planes and headphones? They chose 2pin early on, so that became the standard.
Most planes have a 30ish year service life. So the older planes now are from the early 90s or so. So you should be starting to see more 3.5mm, as it was pretty well established as a standard for personal music players by then. The walkman had long since used it, for example.
But updating electronics for planes is expensive and time consuming due to regulations. So there will be some lag in terms of newer planes rolling out with it. And you’re probably flying more older planes than newer ones, in general.
Latest Answers