Yesterday, Apple pushed out their newest AirPods, the AirPods Pro. These are the first of the popular AirPods to include active noise cancellation – and so far, first impressions are that it is pretty good. But, the question that many want to know is how do you use your AirPods with airplane entertainment units?
This Little Item Will Let You Connect Your AirPods to In-Flight Entertainment
If you are in an airplane, however, AirPods and other earbuds are not that great to use if you want to watch the in-flight entertainment units. Because the earbuds operate only with Bluetooth and have no plug adapters, you will be stuck if you try to use them for in-flight movies! If you want to avoid that problem, you could always just fly American Airlines as they try more and more to dump those units…
International carriers have been upgrading these units for years so it is not a surprise that many passengers will want to watch something on them during flight. If you have earbuds that you want to use with them – especially the new AirPods Pro with noise cancellation, you are going to need a little device to get going.
One Simple Device and Away You Go!
Link: Twelve South AirFly Transmitter – $34 (this is an affiliate link that supports the site)
There are several devices on the market that do this but, basically, what you need is a Bluetooth adapter/transmitter that will plug into the in-flight headphone jack and then transmit that audio signal via bluetooth to your AirPods or other earbuds. The main reason all in-flight units do not do this already is there would be too much interference with 300-500 bluetooth signals on a wide-body plane. So, you must grab something for the middle ground!
I researched many of these devices and ordered this one for the good reviews and also because it is made by Twelve South, a company that has a lot of quality products for Apple devices.
Just make sure you sync your AirPods with them in the case like the directions say! Otherwise, they will not sync. Check your documentation on syncing with other earbuds to see how to do it.
While it is annoying to have another step to sync your earbuds for in-flight entertainment, it is definitely more preferred by many people to use earbuds over headphones so at least there is a solution!
This will also work with earbuds like the excellent Sony WF-1000XM3 earbuds.
This might be a dumb question, but might this device also work with Bose wireless products?
Yup.
Is it an apple product?
No, it was made to be a good accessory for AirPods but works with any Bluetooth headphones. The company that made it does make a lot of products for Apple devices.
Yes! It will work with any bluetooth device (I only referenced AirPods in the title because there has been increased interest about them).
Thx Charlie.
I’ve used AirFly for a few months and they are easy to sync, but the best part is no cords to get in your way.
I’ve also used them with Hop On/Hop Off buses, on gym equipment for the live TV feed and they even worked with a museum audio feed once!