Airplane Seat Power Ground Loop?

Interesting. 

When I worked on sensitive equipment, I had to use an AntiStatic Wristband to ground me to the workstation.  It looked like the Twist 'o Flex watchband. Connected that wire to your dac.  Some antistatic band did have a like a 100M ohm resistor in it, which we had to check every so often.  Idea is to Bleed off the charge.  Not current thru you.  Or maybe put a ground lead from your headphone out to the padding of your headphone.   I'll choose my wrist thank you.

Why?  I don't know.  Guessing on it.  The USB power ground might be floating and not part of aircraft ground.  Like that 100M ohm resistor, your butt is it.  You could take a jumper lead from your dac straight to a metal surface of the airplane.  I you get a smoke from your laptop or dac or a big arch and the airplane stop working... hey! sacrifices must be made in the name of Science.

@tomask6 

Airplanes have so many electronic devices working the hum could be many things, but I’m guessing when you hold your device, you are grounding it.  Apple or many others offer external batteries.  I have a couple of them.  The Apple one is about the size of a deck of cards only square and the No name one is the width of a deck of cards only almost twice the length.  Either keeps my iPad charged for 36+ hours, when doing a lot of video calls.

All the best.

Audioengine wrote me back said the airplane power isn't properly grounded so I am the ground. Will try the wristband.
Incidentally, unrelated to this post, I flew a United 787 last year and when my bare arm touched any metal surrounding the armrest, I swear I felt current running thru it to the point where it got uncomfortable after many hours.
We're talking 15 hour flights here, not short hops, so it's nice to play locally stored hi res music on my laptop while I work.