Comments on: Suit: cabin noise deafened man

By: Jim Collins

Jim Collins — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:54:46 +0000

I’ve got about a 15% loss myself, but it took quite a while to get it. I do not believe that you can acquire such a loss in just one flight on a relatively quiet aircraft. If you want pure noise, I reccommend the A-37. It isn’t called “Tweety Bird” for nothing.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 23:03:41 +0000

@Jim Collins: One of my offices was at the end of a military/civilian airfield. F-15 demonstrators operated out of that field. They would practice regularly, going vertical right over over my head. They weren’t quite as awesome as the C-5As coming in to land.

Worst of all, though, was the Concorde on takeoff.

I’m definitely on the deaf side of the line. Which is a mixed blessing, actually. It sucks for the people with whom I converse and constantly ask to repeat themselves. It’s good for living in a city. I don’t hear the noise at all, short of sirens.

By: D

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:12:28 +0000

The plaintiff previously sued a one-armed man for clapping too loudly.

By: Jim Collins

Jim Collins — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:08:41 +0000

I have spent quite a bit of time near F-14s and F/A-18s on full afterburner and suffered minimal hearing loss.(aircraft carrier flight deck) I just rode Delta out of Minneapolis-St. Paul last week in one of those cigar tubes with wings they call an aircraft and actually found them to be kind of quiet.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:13:54 +0000

I’m going to suggest that he had defective ears to begin with if a four-hour flight caused so much damage. The 99.999% who fly regularly report no such harm, so this does appear to be idiosyncratic and impossible to predict.

Having said that, I find noise-cancelling headphones one of the greatest inventions of the 20th C. They take the wear-and-tear of air travel down several notches.

By: Walter Olson

Walter Olson — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:34:43 +0000

>KDP I think the idea is that he was given no reason in advance to expect such a noisy flight.

By: KDP

KDP — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:31:55 +0000

Is the guy so cheap that he cannot put our $1.50 for a pair of foam earplugs at his local Wal-Mart?