According to MSN Health & Fitness, airplanes are the worst place to use your headphones. Because of the background noise, people tend to turn up the volume to levels that can cause long term damage. But if you use noise-canceling headphones, that likelihood goes from 80% to 20%. Plus it blocks out that annoying guy yelling to his seatmate behind you. Makes sense to me!!
Here is a post I did a few months ago that has a link reviews by CNET. If you don’t have a pair yet, and you travel a lot, it may be time to go shopping.
I MUCH prefer my noise isolating over noise canceling. Smaller, lighter, no batteries and more effective at blocking everything out rather than just the engine drone.