How bad do you have to be to get booked as the entertainment on a flight by a discount airline? I used to ride the subway in San Francisco all the time and the buskers were not top-flight (pun only sightly intended) musicians.

The crying babies, loud drunk passengers, engine roar, and video game noises that accompany every flight these days aren't enough? Let's add a burned-out hippie playing an out of tune version of "Dust in the Wind" ad nauseam.

Sounds like a recipe for in-flight assault.

I won't be able to hear them with my earplugs in, so I don't care.
There used to be sax players underground at O'hare. On the one hand, I give them credit for initiative. On the other hand, usually not so great.

What. The. Balls.

False rumor: Headsets can be tuned to a white noise channel for a $5 surcharge.

Since the NAACP has issued a no-fly warning to black people re: American Airlines, perhaps American could follow Southwest's example and provide live music, too.

Because healing.

"Probably without the hat and guilt-prompting coercive cash requests."

Don't count on it. I will not be surprised if I see a tip jar near the door as you exit the plane.

Can't begin to count the number of ways in which this is a bad idea. Wait until the first time someone gets poked in the eye by a guitar tuning peg.

Is this true?
Their frequent flyers won’t stand for it. The second they start getting complaints from the people who book Business Select fares, this will end.

Don't expect this to last long.

Seats on an airplane are at a premium. Filling them with paying passengers is how airlines pay the bills. Filling them with employee or contractor musicians is not.

A jazz trio takes up three seats and luggage space (and weight allowance) for the instruments. All at a cost to the airline.

As the non-discount airlines have discovered, price is the main driving factor in airline patronage, not full-cabin entertainment.

Finding a generic genre of music that will entertain most of the passengers without alienating the others will be especially difficult in an age of widely available and customizable music options (iTunes, Pandora, etc.).

Now, I have visions of those annoying SNL Culps providing the in-flight entertainment.

Better to invest the money in upgrading to in-seat entertainment. That way, passengers can choose what type of music, movie, or other entertainment they want, consume those options with headphones, and not disturb their fellow passengers.