Americans may be excited to read their Kindles from gate-to-gate, but they still don’t want fellow travelers yakking during plane rides.
That’s according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University on Wednesday, which found that 60 percent of Americans don’t think phone calls should be allowed when planes are in the air, twice the amount that said they should be. People over the age of 65 were most firmly against the practice, at 66 percent, but the trend held true for even the youngest travelers: those ages 18 to 29 were opposed by a margin of 52 percent to 39 percent.
After federal regulators recently allowed mobile devices to be used in airplane mode from takeoff through landing, regulators have also raised the prospect of eventually allowing phone calls.
The poll results shouldn’t be too surprising for anyone who has sat next to a bus traveler complaining to their mom via smartphone, or ridden in a taxi cab with a driver who is having a heated argument via Bluetooth. Unless one is trapped in an elevator, enclosed spaces, strangers and phone calls rarely mix.