On a flight last week from DC to Charlotte I was seated in the exit row aisle and the two passengers next to me, who hadn’t met before, started chatting. The woman in the middle seat was a loud and energetic talker. I was trying to concentrate, and get some work done, but it was tough – even with earphones in. And I thought, ‘how is this different than people talking on the phone on a plane’ which everyone seems to hate so much? Oh, this was worse – it wasn’t just one end of the conversation which you’d hear on a phone call, it was both ends of the conversation! Talking to another person is fine. But talking to another person through a device is… not fine? I thought about this, coming across the story of an American Airlines passenger dictating a voice memo into their phone on a flight from New York LaGuardia to Miami. A flight attendant treated this as ‘talking on the phone’ and this not allowed. I don’t think that makes sense! But he kept going anyway, and they didn’t do anything about it.…