Perhaps the only significant contribution, over the past decade, to making long flights in coach class endurable has been the seat-back screen and the in-flight entertainment package.

I know of no long-haul flight which does not have those little square screens right in front of the faces of passengers … and they go far in making the otherwise punishing experience bearable.

Now, airlines are planning to remove the screens in the coming years because 1) we “are all on our phones, anyway” and 2) because operators can save another few bucks in the process.

We recently did 11 hours from Paris to LAX and back, in coach, and anyone who has done that knows that the 11 hours can seem like 20. Especially over the second half of the flight, when the hours crawl by and the level of discomfort in tiny seats rises.

I am not a smart-phone user, so the idea of giving up the movies and TV available on the seat-back screen fills me with dread.

On the Air France flight to Paris, I watched three movies: Frantz, a sweet little French movie about loss during and after World War I; Elvis & Nixon, pertaining to the bizarre meeting between the singer and the U.S. president in 1970; and The Beatles: Eight Days a Week, looking at the four years when the Fab Four toured the world.

(An underrated aspect of in-flight entertainment. The movies and TV from other parts of the world, stuff you might never have been aware of until you began clicking through all the possibilities.)

Normally, I might not have seen any of those three films in the theater, but all three held my attention and “shortened” my flight substantially. Which was welcome on the typically cramped 3-4-3 layout of the A380 aircraft.

Some travelers seem ambivalent about airlines taking out the seat-back screen — or simply not ordering it in new planes. Those are the people who believe their phones and tablets can keep passengers entertained/distracted. (They also look forward to the removal of those bulky boxes near your feet, through which the entertainment package is delivered.)

Of course, an absolute “must” is power at every seat, so that all those phone or tablet owners don’t see their devices go dead due to a lack of power while flying over Greenland. As well as effective connections to wifi.

One air travel blogger suggested he would prefer both the seat-back screen as well as improved wifi and power arrangements, explaining it like this:

“It is awesome to be able to watch television or a movie in the background while working on my laptop. This is indeed a First World problem.”

The linked pieces suggest long-haul flights over an ocean will have seat-back screens for the next few years, but they may soon begin to disappear from domestic flights and shorter international flights.

Anyone who has flown an American carrier over the past 20 years knows that anything over, like, four hours in the air can seem almost interminable, without a seat-back screen.

If you have it, a movie and a couple of TV episodes, and you’re nearly on the ground.

Without it, you can find yourself staring into space while stuck in the middle of a packed-out 737, devising maledictions for the people who were so keen to make their customers miserable.