Originally Posted by soitgoes

I have a question about this, just because I'm curious:

I'm a Herc driver/Regional puke, and we are headset fully on, 100% of the time at both. Obviously in the Herc it's required because the thing is so damn loud; the RJ is fairly quiet, but we still use the headset (I even use my noise-cancelling)... I think I could count on one to two hands the number of times I had another pilot in the RJ suggest we go off headset, and they were all CA's (before I upgraded)... never had an FO bring it up.

I hear/see conversations in all the Cargo/Major threads about headsets off or one-ear-off-one-ear-on ops, and just wonder why it's so common? The times that I "had" to do it, I had to talk MUCH louder to communicate with the other pilot (reminded me of trying to talk in a bar environment) and had the worst time with the intercom (too tinny and hard to understand). Seemed much more fatiguing to me than just wearing a headset.

Especially when taking into account hearing loss considerations, just thought I'd throw out the question(s)... Is it maybe a generational thing or maybe you just go with what you know?