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I imagine it's because if the conversation is terrible you're still stuck together for potential hours. It's high risk medium reward.

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Not really, if the conversation is not going well then you just do your own thing that you would have done, if you hadn't have tried talking.

I've had many fantastic conversations with people on planes and few meh ones, it's deffo worth putting a bit of effort in.

where is the risk?

Some people don’t take the cue that you’re done talking, and will continue to try to talk to you for the entire flight. Combine that with the fact that some of us are uncomfortable overtly shutting someone down, so we are stuck with nodding and trying unsuccessfully to go back to reading our book.

good point,

I would just put on some headphones and read in that situation

I always have some noise cancelling headphones where ever I travel, great for reducing the noise of screaming kids and people trying to facetime

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