Precious few airlines currently offer Bluetooth connectivity from their in-flight entertainment screens – but that's no longer a problem, thanks to a nifty new breed of wireless earbud that connects to anything with a headphone jack. As of December last year, according to , only Delta and United were even beginning to roll out Bluetooth connectivity on a small subset of their aircraft. The vast majority of airlines have barely emerged from the hollow-tube stethoscope era, and still seem proud of themselves for offering touch screens and 3.
5-mm headphone jacks. Which is fine if you carry wired headphones – but no use for what we assume is the vast majority of people, who prefer the convenience and pocket-carry portability of wireless earbuds. So we sit there watching in-flight movies using tinny, plastic-wrap airline headphones that somehow seem to amplify ambient noise, with our lovely noise-cancelling buds sitting uselessly in our pockets.
Unless you have some of these: both Bowers & Wilkins (B&W) and JBL now have earbuds on the market which solve the problem. B&W's Pi7 S2 and flagship Pi8, and JBL's TOUR PRO 3 each come with a charging case designed to act as an audio retransmission system for anything that puts sound out via USB-C or through a AUX/3.5-mm analog jack.
Plug them in, and these cases act as dongles which can wirelessly transmit their own Bluetooth signal to the earbuds, enabling high-quality sound while listening to music, movies etc. They both feature Act.