I used the QC15 with the UFlyMike, and it was a pretty good piece of kit, but had the severe downside that you couldn't hear anything if the battery went flat. Which is why i always replaced it rather early to make sure it never happens to me. Now i use a Bose A20 which is a spectacular piece of kit, both the ANR and the passive noise dampening as well as the comfort of wearing it is the best i've ever experienced. Still ordered a ProFlight in April to check out which of the two will remain with me for the long run, while selling off the other one. The downside of the A20 is its bulk and weight in my flightkit and actually on my head as well.
I did start out with passive DCs in flightschool, provided for us by the school. On starting to fly ME planes we had active fixed installation Sennheisers on board, and they were actually a very good compromise, however, being on ear and me wearing glasses they grew uncomfortable after some hours. As we were not allowed to fly for more than 3 hours in a row (yes, we hat flight duty time regulations in flight school) it was not a big issue. In my first job on the 737 we had personal passive Sennheisers provided by the company, if they broke simply call maintenance and they replaced them and did all the repair thing. Later my AME mentioned that my hearing got worse over time and suggested to switching to ANR, which i did with a Telex 850, an excellent headset as it didn't use batteries and was very lightweight. But it was simply the wrong headset for a loud airplane like the 737. After that i decided against a Bose professional ANR headset and rather went with the QC15/UflyMike combination, for several reasons: less space in the flightkit, very lightweight, dual use for deadheading and on the flightdeck, and comfortable to wear. But now using the A20 i have to say that it is actually a better fit, although i switched to a slightly less noisy airplane with the A320.