Is there anything worse than boarding a flight, ready for an hours-long binge-watching session, only to discover there’s no seatback TV screens?
With many airlines scrapping screens in favour of inflight entertainment apps you watch on your own device, passengers hunched over personal devices have become an increasingly common sight.
Now a pro golfer has revealed his “genius” trick for watching shows and movies in the air without a TV monitor – and he learned it where we all uncover good hacks these days, on TikTok.
American golfer Tyler McCumber revealed to Golf.com how he turns his smartphone into a seatback display screen because, as he rightly points out, “no one likes to hold their phone up for five hours”.
The PGA Tour pro notes: “If you’re on an older plane, they won’t have screens. A lot of the planes that they’re flying right now, they haven’t had screens.”
However, you can get by without one by using this viral hack involving the airline’s sick bag, according to McCumber.
“So, when your tray goes up, there’s a little notch. So, what I do is I take my phone, and I take my case off. I take the throw-up bag, and you put it in your phone case and put your case back on,” he said.
“So, you can hold your phone up, essentially, and then you put the bag [in between the notch and the tray.] That’s how you watch TV.”
McCumber admits he’s even received praise for the hack. “Everyone’s like, ‘That’s genius’,” he said.
The post has received more than 350,000 likes since it was first in 2020.
The athlete isn’t the first to popularise the air travel trick. A TikTok user named Stephen Edwards garnered more than nine million views for his 2020 tutorial of the hands-free smartphone hack, dubbing it a “life changer”.
@stephenedwards008 #travel #lifehack #netflix ♬ original sound – Stephen Edwards
The clip clocked up thousands of comments from viewers, many keen to give the hack a go themselves, though some did share the concern of one critic: “it’s all fun and games until you gotta be sick”.
