I had to sleep overnight in the phoenix airport once. All night long a loud speaker was repeating at high volume "Caution: the moving walkway is coming to an end." I remember wishing that it would indeed come to an end.
Besides making the airport more pleasant, targeting announcements to the relevant travelers also means they are much more likely to be heard. When 99% of announcements are irrelevant, we just mentally screen them out.
I had this experience starting a new company recently.<p>Every single SaaS product seemed to have a dozen onboarding floating modals that need to be dismissed. It would have been impossible to read them all. In most cases I had used the product a lot before but I simply had a new corporate email so they thought I was a new user.<p>So if any said anything important I wouldn’t know because I had to dismiss them all.
I agree... in early 2000, at Colombo (Sri Lanka) airport, they were calling my name, over and over, but never picked it up. I started to pay attention when some dispatched army guys (it was after the 2001 Tamil Tigers attack at the airport) were screening everyone at the airport asking for my name... ops sorry.
I didn't realise that "quiet airport" still means there are targeted announcements
See "Alarm fatigue" <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue</a>
Not exactly the same thing, but I was flying from SFO to the east coast and this stood out to me:<p>At SFO: "Welcome to San Francisco! Please feel free to relax in our yoga and meditation rooms."<p>At DTW: "Welcome to Detroit. Remember to cover your face when you sneeze."<p>Totally different vibes.
Also DTW having everything in Japanese, I'm guessing cause of the auto industry
Detroit sounds really cool. If I were a young person, I would look for a cheap, once-great, up-and-coming city where I could make my mark, with lots of other young people doing the same thing. The other one is Richmond, VA. There is a secret underground of young, smart, kind people moving there.
I always like the differences in the ads.<p>SFO: "Use our AI startup!"<p>DCA: "Buy our warship!"
"In New York, all the advertising on the streets and on the subway assumes that you, the person reading, are an ambiently depressed twenty-eight-year-old office worker whose main interests are listening to podcasts, ordering delivery, and voting for the Democrats. I thought I found that annoying, but in San Francisco they don’t bother advertising normal things at all. The city is temperate and brightly colored, with plenty of pleasant trees, but on every corner it speaks to you in an aggressively alien nonsense. Here the world automatically assumes that instead of wanting food or drinks or a new phone or car, what you want is some kind of arcane B2B service for your startup" - Sam Kriss
I haven’t lived in NYC for more than 20 years, but I still associate it with Dr Zizmor, a dermatologist. His ads were all over the subway.<p>He retired not too long ago. I know because it was notable enough to deserve a feature in the NY Times.
I remember those ads...<p>Here, the infamous one are these James Wang, Esq ads on the placemats for Chinese restaurants in the area. I suspect he placed the ad 20 years ago but they never bothered to change the design...
Ha. Last time I went through DCA the ads were all "Here's why TikTok isn't evil!"
Go to Louisville -- it's all BOURBON.
But how am I going to know <i>the white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the red zone.</i> ?
This is a nice idea. I don't remember the last time I walked through an airport without noise cancelling earbuds and my own music playing. The noise level definitely adds to the stress if you are a frequent traveler.<p>This is my current favorite airport album. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orph%C3%A9e_(album)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orph%C3%A9e_(album)</a>
I wish they would do this when you're boarding the plane. I get that there is essential information that everyone needs to know, but if you're a frequent flier you've probably heard the "put your larger carry-on in the overhead bin and your smaller bag underneath the seat in front of you" hundreds, if not thousands of times.
There's a large subpopulation of people flying who seem to have no idea how planes and airports work. Maybe they're sleep deprived or it's their first time flying, but these announcements are targeted at them.
I think its more likely that the people do know they just don't care and it helps them to put their backpack overhead so they do it anyways. There is minimal/no enforcement.
I'm very much a we-live-in-a-society, follow the rules kind of guy, but if I checked a bag and only have my backpack in the cabin, you bet your ass I'm going to try and find a place for it in the overhead instead of cluttering up where I want to put my feet. The flight attendants can go scold the passenger with the oversized roller + backpack + 20 liter "purse" instead.
Unfortunately there's also a large subpopulation of people flying who wear noise-cancelling headphones and have their eyes glued to their phones; choosing to be disengaged from their immediate surroundings.
I remember one time I had to fly back from a business trip on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Made me realize there is something about business travelers, they cut towards situationally aware and self conscientious types. The opposite of people flying the day before Thanksgiving.<p>I flew into the Orange County Airport before they tore it down and made it like the others. Felt very civilized. As I get older I find the hostile public spaces and infrastructure more and more annoying.
That particular rule kinda depends on the airline and how full the flight is
Especially flying with kids at naptime or bedtime. Trying to get an extremely tired toddler to fall asleep on a plane just to hear an announcement about in flight entertainment. OMG.
There is a large and growing population of people leaving their home country for the first time ever, let alone by plane.
Much much worse are the repeated advertisement “announcements” about signing up for their credit card or frequent flyer program
There is apparently 10000 people every day who learn about it for the first time, according to <a href="https://xkcd.com/1053/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1053/</a>
Burbank Airport used to get recognizable celebrities to record the canned public announcements in their own style. I seem to recall Joan Rivers, Henny Youngman, Jerry Seinfeld, etc. It took some of the edge off while you waited around, at least for a bit. Don't know if this continues.
One of my formative consulting projects in like 2002 or 2003 was in St. Louis, where couple of hundred of accenture and avanade and microsofties got together for like 6 months week after week to hack on a large software project for multiple states. It was a total crazy show but who cares. I had to take a red eye from west coast to Chicago which landed at 5, then take a 7am to St. Louis. I found some places to just lay there for 2 hours in Ohare, which is already hard. But they all had those TVs that were blasting CNN. I was smart and bought a legendary TV-B-Gone <a href="https://www.tvbgone.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.tvbgone.com/</a> and it would work on those! And on so many other tvs out there, from the sports bars to obscure brands in the airport shuttle buses. Thank you TV-B-Gone!
The new Berlin Brandenburg airport is the most quiet and lovely I've seen to date: <a href="https://onemileatatime.com/berlin-brandenburg-airport-review/" rel="nofollow">https://onemileatatime.com/berlin-brandenburg-airport-review...</a>
My home airport. I can confirm that this is a (relatively) quiet airport. I wish they had a meditation space. Knowing SF, it's probably coming.
There are Yoga rooms in terminals 1, 2, and 3
There is the Berman Reflection Room at SFO.
The Calgary and Edmonton airports are also like this, and I agree that it makes being in the airport <i>so</i> much more pleasant.<p>(I think that all the Canadian airports might be similarly quiet, but I haven't flown through them recently so I'm not entirely sure)
SFO is so nice just because of this. I hope other airports follow.
The one time I flew from Austin, there was a band playing at a restaurant in the ticketed area. Going through security it was bad (you could only really hear the drums) but once I was through it was downright painful. Really makes you wonder how these decisions get made.
the biggest problem with SFO is all the delayed flights from weather/wind or some other logistical hassle. Usually I try to fly into SJC instead
Has anyone actually heard Eno at the airport? What is it like? Does it actually calm you?
No, but I’ve heard Aphex Twin in an aquarium once. Bristol (UK) for anyone interested, which fits.
I was hoping to see discussion of this - to my knowledge it was sold to a few airports who removed it after it was poorly received: <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twentieth-century-music/article/abs/unsettling-brian-enos-music-for-airports/376877E6D34C3CBFFF76B552ADD653A6" rel="nofollow">https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twentieth-century-mu...</a><p>Personally 1/1 has been absolutely sublime for me as a tool for meditation, but I don't know that I could imagine it in an airport.
This is wonderful. I remember I was in Asia in 2000 relaxing at the airport and was puzzled why it felt so nice and peaceful. Then I realized that it was the lack of repetitive pointless announcements.
I was waiting for a flight at SFO, trying to get some work done. Two airport employees were sitting at the next table. One of them started watching a video on her phone, on speaker, at loud volume. I politely asked her to use headphones or turn off the sound. Hey retort: "this is an airport!". I replied that it's a 'quiet airport' but her reaction suggested to me that she was not familiar with the concept.
I'd love to also have a low smell airport.<p>So many airports direct passenger flow through a shopping zone drenched in perfume fumes. Disgusting as far as I'm concerned.<p>Not to mention the screaming visual pollution of course.
It's not just announcements. SLC (at least) used to have TVs playing the "Airport Channel". Last time I went through there (and maybe the time before?), they were gone. It makes a big difference. You still have announcements, but at least the announcements aren't cutting through some TV noise that you don't care about <i>that is always there</i>.
Newly renovated (and beautiful) PDX does this too
I have this theory that all sorts of stimuli exhaust our nervous system: be it auditory, wind stimulation of skin, shaking or even smells. That's why people get tired flying on airplane, spending a day outside seemingly doing nothing, etc etc
Title: San Francisco Airport Removed 90 Minutes of Daily Noise — Travelers Say It Changed Everything
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