There’s now, apparently, an epidemic of Christians who get on planes and begin preaching when they know they finally have a captive audience. Evangelist Whitney Lynn, one of the more notorious culprits of this, even said as much in a recent TikTok post: “I just love a captive audience.”
The fact that the sermons are unwanted doesn’t bother the evangelists at all because, for once, they have an audience that can’t walk away. And the hope that strangers might convert outweighs any concern that they’ll conclude Christians are lunatics.
There’s unfortunately very little airline staff can do to stop this. While there are rules regarding passengers who are disobedient or belligerent, preaching doesn’t necessarily cross a line. Flight attendants can politely ask them to stop, but I have yet to see any examples of plane preachers getting kicked off flights because they wouldn’t shut up.
Which means we’re just stuck with the possibility Christians may hijack a flight with their voices.
How is this not being belligerent? What if this was a MAGAt doing this (probably already is)?
If anything, this seems like a quick way for a fellow passenger to get annoyed and punch out the disruptive preacher. If this happened on a plane I was on, I'd clap for the person who decked the preacher. It really says something about how this "religion" is dying off if thos is a tactic they're resorting to.
*Edit: if I were the flight crew, I'd start by asking the passenger to sit down. If they didn't I'd warn the passenger with something like:
Ma'am, you are continuing to be being a disruption despite being told you knock it off. You can either sit down and be quiet, or you will be sat down and quieted. Please take your seat.
Then if they still insited, I'd either have an air marshall "take care of them" them, or I would.
ANC does not work well for non-predictive noise. It helps drown out background noise like engines and general "hub-bub," but for someone speaking to a quiet audience it will just lower the overall volume, not cancel it out. But, like you said, you can turn on music or an audio book to help ignore them, though.
EDIT for the people downvoting me because they think they know how ANC works:
https://gentlehush.com/noise-canceling-headphones-voices/
https://www.headphonexperts.com/can-active-noise-cancellation-block-talking/
https://topheadphonereviews.com/anc-human-voices-speech-reduction/
https://www.reddit.com/r/sony/comments/y75d4n/should_i_be_able_to_hear_people_talking_with_anc/
In my experience when I have the ANC turned all the way up I can't hear shit. I have found a lot of it also hinges on the ear tips for buds but my over the ears block out the world. As with everything though users experience may vary.
Good ANC cancels everything. It’s active for a reason.
https://www.headphonexperts.com/can-active-noise-cancellation-block-talking/
https://gentlehush.com/noise-canceling-headphones-voices/