Oh, be quiet! No one wants to hear your airplane chatter. | Cruising Altitude

A friend recently sent me an Instagram reel in which Chelsea Handler rants about how annoying it is to listen to people talking on planes.

“I am over people talking on planes to each other, not just to me, to each other,” she said. “I don’t want to hear those conversations between people. I want everyone to get on planes, put their headphones on, look at their phones and just stick to themselves. I don’t want to overhear any of that garbage anymore.”

And you know what? Chelsea Handler is right!

A few weeks ago I was on an early morning flight and the two people seated in the row ahead of me spent the entire time – from when we boarded at 6 a.m. to when we landed three hours later – speaking to each other at a volume that was more appropriate for Times Square than seat 2C before the sun came up.

Etiquette experts are on my and Handler’s side, too. In a 2023 survey of more than 1,500 travelers by Only Wanderlust, chatty seat neighbors were identified as a top 20 airplane annoyance.

When you travel, you need to keep to yourself.

Sit down and shut up

Seriously, whether you’re traveling with your best friend or having a chin wag with the stranger seated next to you, no one else on the plane really wants to hear what you have to say.

“The rule on airplanes is that you have to stay within your bubble. That’s the etiquette rule. You have to stay within your physical space ... The noise we create also needs to stay within our bubble,” etiquette expert Nick Leighton, who co-hosts the “Were You Raised by Wolves?” podcast told me.

He said airplanes are already loud with engine noise, so any conversation is automatically at a higher volume to compensate, and that’s just not fair to your fellow passengers, most of whom are probably trying to dissociate as much as possible.

“It’s different than in a restaurant, where everyone else is talking,” Leighton said. “It’s rude because nobody can escape. In some places it’s like, ‘I can go to a different park bench,’” but with planes as full as ever, it’s unlikely that your annoyed seat neighbors can swap to an empty row somewhere else.

Mind the small talk, too

There’s nothing wrong with greeting the person you’re seated next to if you don’t know them, but Leighton said it’s generally best to keep it to pleasantries and then pipe down.

“It’s perfectly fine to acknowledge other peoples’ humanity in this instance. Hello, a head nod, that’s polite,” he said. “You need to be very adept, aware of is the other person interested in having this conversation ... Common cues are, they put headphones in, they open their book. There are a lot of signals that are like, ‘we’re done talking now.’”

Prepare for the worst

While conscientious travelers may take notes from this column and alter their behavior if they’ve been chatterboxes in the past, there are a lot of inconsiderate jerks out there who are probably never going to read this and are just going to keep on yapping.

“We need to bring headphones, we need to bring earplugs, we need to bring noise-canceling things, knowing that there are annoying people,” Leighton said. “It is not reasonable to expect pin-drop, Shinkansen-level silence on every aircraft.”

As usual, it’s the thoughtful travelers who ultimately are going to have to accommodate the annoying ones.

None of this means you can’t talk at all on planes. If you’re traveling with someone you know or somehow, miraculously, have a mile-high meet-cute, it’s OK to converse so long as you’re responsible about it.

“An annoying loud conversation is an annoying loud conversation, whether or not it’s somebody you know,” Leighton said. “Nobody really wants to be trapped in other peoples’ conversations, whether that conversation is ‘where you’re flying to, where you’re from,’ or ‘did you pay the babysitter?’ ”

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Other etiquette tips

Even if you’re quiet as a church mouse when you fly, it’s still important to be considerate of those around you in other ways.

Leighton said being respectful of the flight crew, keeping your stuff in order, disposing of your trash responsibly, and just generally minding your manners make the flying experience more pleasant for everyone.

“If we could all just be a little politer, everyone would be in a better mood about the whole thing,” he said.

Zach Wichter is a travel reporter and writes the Cruising Altitude column for USA TODAY. He is based in New York and you can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Chelsea Handler is right, shut up while on a plane | Cruising Altitude