5 ms·

The Scourge of Airport Noise

60 points by resolutebat 3y ago

asimpleusecase 3y ago
This is a major reason that people pay for premium lounge access, it is not the food, nor the booze but the quite that is the true luxury.
- chronic73910 3y ago
  > This is a major reason that people pay for premium lounge access, it is not the food, nor the booze but the quiet that is the true luxury. Not true for middle-class lounges such as Centurion, Priority Pass, and most airline lounges (Polaris, Flagship, Senator, Singapore, etc). Most go for food or drinks. The lounges are often crowded and loud with silverware, plates, kids, and TVs. For elite lounges such as the Private Suite, Lufthansa and Emirates First Terminal, yes, quietness is a big selling point. But at this point, you’re on the vector to flying private domestically.
  - sixstringtheory 3y ago
    Oh god, TVs in public places is another one. Automotive service, doctor office waiting areas… I need to start carrying around a universal remote.
    - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
      I went to a medical clinic a few weeks ago. This clinic is in a town which is a Native American enclave within a regular city. The natives there are majority Catholic, and there is a colonial-style church in the middle of town. I was 45 minutes early, and the only soul in the waiting room. The TV was blaring and I tried sitting right under it so I wouldn't be distracted by it. But it was playing some reality show featuring young adults. They had some outing to a cemetery, and they were actively, constantly making crude sexual references, and then they started mocking and blaspheming the Catholic faith, (the faith of the native population being "served" by these predatory White colonist medical people) and joking about ghosts and séances and other garbage. So, I went back to the front desk, and I simply politely asked if she could power off the television. She seemed perplexed by my request, like nobody asks that, but she didn't ask why, and she complied with my request, and I enjoyed some peace and quiet after that.
  - kanbara 3y ago
    lufthansa elite? MUC/FRA was pretty mid. Polaris SFO was amazing
    - gaadd33 3y ago
      The Lufthansa first class lounges/terminal were mid compared to United's business class lounge? I could understand that if you are in the Lufthansa Senator lounges, those are the business class and star alliance lounges. What made the United's business class lounge better than something like the first class terminal at FRA and directly being dropped off at your plane?
    - chronic73910 3y ago
      > lufthansa elite? MUC/FRA was pretty mid. Polaris SFO was amazing I’m not talking about Lufthansa’s Senator or business class lounges that anyone with Star Alliance Gold can access. Those are at the level of Delta Sky Clubs or the new 2023 United Clubs. I’m talking about an entire private terminal with chauffeur service to the plane.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Would be much cheaper to buy some noise canceling headphones. Having the benefit of muting sound everywhere.
Terr_ 3y ago
This kind of thing is related to Alarm Fatigue [0] and also has implications for designing software notifications and dialogs. More is not always better when it comes to warnings, and is often worse. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue
- nicbou 3y ago
  Korean emergency alerts are a good example. I got 5-10 a day during my first week in Seoul. At first it's scary, then it's annoying, then you turn them off.
- ehnto 3y ago
  I managed a product that was producing nearly a million exceptions every week. The developer considered almost every circumstance to be an exception. Username and password wrong? Exception. Form field not validated? Exception! Request timeout, ah! Whatever will we do! Exception! There were even some exceptions for things that went well. But you can imagine, if everything is exceptional, real issues don't stand out anymore and go unnoticed.
  - euroderf 3y ago
    It's a rule of software development management: If everything is a priority... then nothing is a priority.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  >also has implications for designing software notifications and dialogs. I block notifs[1] from 99% of the programs on my phone because THEY. ARE. NOT. IMPORTANT. The small handful of programs that do have notifications enabled are because they actually are worth my attention. [1]: No, I refuse to properly call them notifications because notifs are not notifications. Notifications shouldn't be making me question if they are important, hence notif.
BLKNSLVR 3y ago
Beautifully sardonically-yet-accurately written. Worth the brief read as cautionary example for whatever it is you might be working on. "The pointlessness of this counsel needs no elaboration."
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
Kinda the same as 'please listen carefully as our menu options have changed' and 'we're experiencing higher than usual calls'. Or all the texts I get about remindeds of appointments followed by asking for reviews. It's like every channel is being abused to get us to do something. And I fail to pick out the important ones. Side note, with people wanting more dense housing, noise levels will go up.
- psd1 3y ago
  What you, and TFA, are talking about is specifically stupid announcements. Those are not necessarily connected to dense housing.
  - TillE 3y ago
    It's also not true. Thick walls do wonders (eg, old apartment buildings in Germany are very quiet). It's only a problem with cheap construction.
    - passerby1 3y ago
      Need to mention the punishments and fines in Germany for making noise. Switzerland has even more strict rules (and very angry neighbours, I assume).
    - tigen 3y ago
      There also are cultural norms and/or enforcement around stuff like loud cars or trucks. I visited Asian cities recently and did not notice offensive noise. No crazy/rowdy yelling people, quiet buses. I slept in quieter neighborhoods but they were still dense.
      - ehnto 3y ago
        I do actually imagine a rough transition period for some in denser housing in places like America and Australia. I don't think we quite have the outward thoughtfulness as a societal norm, that makes it work in some cultures.
walterbell 3y ago
Disposable earplugs can quiet planes, trains, autos and their respective ports.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Ah an adblocker! How dare you not support them, how will they stay in business? ;-)
spiggytopes 3y ago
'Your call is important to us.' Yeah, but clearly not important enough to justify hiring enough staff. This drives me crazy!
- ipython 3y ago
  But don’t forget, “today we are experiencing higher than normal call volume”- yeah today and the other 364 days of the year…
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  It is worse than that. They say it, stopping the musak with a slightly noisy pause first which almost sounds like someone picked up the phone so now I need to pay attention for the 4 hours it takes to get through not just zone out and code. It then become asshole design when they add 3 rings before that pause as if you finally are getting through! Evil phone system designers!
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    I always wondered why they did that. Is it supposed to fool you into thinking stuff is happening in the background? Like the computers are working really hard on your case, just be patient?
- andra_nl 3y ago
  Yeah, for me that one's right up there with every cookie-cutter cookie-prompt on every website. "We care about your privacy" no. you. do. not. Please don't pretend.
- randomdata 3y ago
  "Your call is important to us" but not "Your reason for calling is important to us". When the call is what is considered important, isn't prolonging the call the ideal?
sixstringtheory 3y ago
Webpage is getting hugged; https://web.archive.org/web/20230830223743/https://askthepilot.com/airport-noise-scourge/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230830223743/https://askthepil...
sixstringtheory 3y ago
We’ve flown several times with our small child, who has been woken so many times by pointless PA announcements on the plane and in the airport. Life already sucks in coach seating, OK? Just let us suffer in peace!
langsoul-com 3y ago
I'd say one of the bigger issues is due to how legal everything has become. Most of those air cabin PA announcements are necessary to legally cover their asses. I doubt am airline would want to find out what happens in court if they didn't give those ps announcements.
- jhugo 3y ago
  There's big variation between airlines, though, so I think that's not the entire explanation. In many cases I think that there is nobody involved with the decision of which announcements to include who really has the job of caring about the overall passenger experience. In some airlines in Asia you get every announcement in three languages, and your IFE is interrupted by all of them, regardless of whether you understand just one. Even worse, they put short pauses between them, teasing you with a couple seconds of your movie before interrupting it again. A basic level of care would be to interrupt the IFE only for the language you had chosen for the IFE when you first sat down.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    They can't really rely on the IFE being set to the correct language. I can read enough of several languages to navigate the menus, choose a film and so on, but not enough to understand the safety briefing. Many people won't touch the IFE at all, especially before take off.
    - jhugo 3y ago
      In case you didn't touch it, it can of course just interrupt the IFE for all three languages, since you're apparently not using it anyway.
ipython 3y ago
But without the in flight PA announcements how else would you be aware of the special offer for the branded airline card? I almost feel bad for the attendants slowly walking down the aisle afterward sadly holding up the offer paperwork after the announcement while everyone sits there annoyed waiting to land.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jhugo 3y ago
Passing through Jakarta airport the other day, there was an announcement which was literally on a continuous loop with no pause in between. It was only about 15 seconds long. Considering I couldn't understand a word of it, after a short while my mind drifted to a mental playback of the "corporate accounts payable Nina speaking - just a moment" scene from Office Space. Nobody around me seemed to be disturbed by it at all, though.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Jakarta's airport and the general Indonesian attitude towards regulations was for me encapsulated in seeing an air conditioner unit in the domestic airport with prominent NO SMOKING/NO SITTING signs, with an Indonesian dude happily perched on top smoking kretek like a chimney.
acyou 3y ago
Complain about too much communication. Complain about too little. The happy medium is somewhere in the middle. The stressors are the complainers and extremists (author of this article included).
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  The absolute worst are the people smugly complaining about the complaining without a stitch of irony.
Symbiote 3y ago
Apparently I'm spoilt, as the airports I use most often (Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London Heathrow) are all quiet, with no announcements until at the gate when boarding behind. Though every time I travel by train in England, they seem to have added more pointless drivel to the railway station security announcement. ("This is a security announcement. Please do not leave baggage unattended anywhere on the station. Any unattended articles may be removed and destroyed by the security services. If you see anything suspicious, please tell a member of staff. Remember, see it, say it, sorted." Back when the IRA were actually leaving bombs around, we only needed the italic bit.)
jgb1984 3y ago
More disturbing to me is how loud it gets when you're actually on the airplane. The plane itself is very loud, that can't be helped I guess, but the crew seemingly has to shout irrelevant things at you every five minutes through that awful megaphone style onboard speaker system. For the millionth time some safety instructions, then welcome this, goodbye that, please buy perfume, please buy lottery cards, please reserve a shuttle taxi, and so on. All very loud, and combined with a sound quality that reminds me of a 20 bucks portable radio makes for a miserable experience. I vote for quiet airplanes in addition to quiet airports!
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
This is really about the scourge of useless "communications." California is the epicenter of this BS. They actually have announcements called "sigalerts" and "red flag warnings." The incontrovertible failure of those names is inherent in their meaninglessness.

60 points by resolutebat 3y ago

This is a major reason that people pay for premium lounge access, it is not the food, nor the booze but the quite that is the true luxury.

chronic73910 3y ago
> This is a major reason that people pay for premium lounge access, it is not the food, nor the booze but the quiet that is the true luxury. Not true for middle-class lounges such as Centurion, Priority Pass, and most airline lounges (Polaris, Flagship, Senator, Singapore, etc). Most go for food or drinks. The lounges are often crowded and loud with silverware, plates, kids, and TVs. For elite lounges such as the Private Suite, Lufthansa and Emirates First Terminal, yes, quietness is a big selling point. But at this point, you’re on the vector to flying private domestically.
- sixstringtheory 3y ago
  Oh god, TVs in public places is another one. Automotive service, doctor office waiting areas… I need to start carrying around a universal remote.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    I went to a medical clinic a few weeks ago. This clinic is in a town which is a Native American enclave within a regular city. The natives there are majority Catholic, and there is a colonial-style church in the middle of town. I was 45 minutes early, and the only soul in the waiting room. The TV was blaring and I tried sitting right under it so I wouldn't be distracted by it. But it was playing some reality show featuring young adults. They had some outing to a cemetery, and they were actively, constantly making crude sexual references, and then they started mocking and blaspheming the Catholic faith, (the faith of the native population being "served" by these predatory White colonist medical people) and joking about ghosts and séances and other garbage. So, I went back to the front desk, and I simply politely asked if she could power off the television. She seemed perplexed by my request, like nobody asks that, but she didn't ask why, and she complied with my request, and I enjoyed some peace and quiet after that.
- kanbara 3y ago
  lufthansa elite? MUC/FRA was pretty mid. Polaris SFO was amazing
  - gaadd33 3y ago
    The Lufthansa first class lounges/terminal were mid compared to United's business class lounge? I could understand that if you are in the Lufthansa Senator lounges, those are the business class and star alliance lounges. What made the United's business class lounge better than something like the first class terminal at FRA and directly being dropped off at your plane?
  - chronic73910 3y ago
    > lufthansa elite? MUC/FRA was pretty mid. Polaris SFO was amazing I’m not talking about Lufthansa’s Senator or business class lounges that anyone with Star Alliance Gold can access. Those are at the level of Delta Sky Clubs or the new 2023 United Clubs. I’m talking about an entire private terminal with chauffeur service to the plane.
Gigachad 3y ago
Would be much cheaper to buy some noise canceling headphones. Having the benefit of muting sound everywhere.

Terr_ 3y ago

This kind of thing is related to Alarm Fatigue [0] and also has implications for designing software notifications and dialogs. More is not always better when it comes to warnings, and is often worse. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue

nicbou 3y ago
Korean emergency alerts are a good example. I got 5-10 a day during my first week in Seoul. At first it's scary, then it's annoying, then you turn them off.
ehnto 3y ago
I managed a product that was producing nearly a million exceptions every week. The developer considered almost every circumstance to be an exception. Username and password wrong? Exception. Form field not validated? Exception! Request timeout, ah! Whatever will we do! Exception! There were even some exceptions for things that went well. But you can imagine, if everything is exceptional, real issues don't stand out anymore and go unnoticed.
- euroderf 3y ago
  It's a rule of software development management: If everything is a priority... then nothing is a priority.
Dalewyn 3y ago
>also has implications for designing software notifications and dialogs. I block notifs[1] from 99% of the programs on my phone because THEY. ARE. NOT. IMPORTANT. The small handful of programs that do have notifications enabled are because they actually are worth my attention. [1]: No, I refuse to properly call them notifications because notifs are not notifications. Notifications shouldn't be making me question if they are important, hence notif.

BLKNSLVR 3y ago

Beautifully sardonically-yet-accurately written. Worth the brief read as cautionary example for whatever it is you might be working on. "The pointlessness of this counsel needs no elaboration."

WirelessGigabit 3y ago

Kinda the same as 'please listen carefully as our menu options have changed' and 'we're experiencing higher than usual calls'. Or all the texts I get about remindeds of appointments followed by asking for reviews. It's like every channel is being abused to get us to do something. And I fail to pick out the important ones. Side note, with people wanting more dense housing, noise levels will go up.

psd1 3y ago
What you, and TFA, are talking about is specifically stupid announcements. Those are not necessarily connected to dense housing.
- TillE 3y ago
  It's also not true. Thick walls do wonders (eg, old apartment buildings in Germany are very quiet). It's only a problem with cheap construction.
  - passerby1 3y ago
    Need to mention the punishments and fines in Germany for making noise. Switzerland has even more strict rules (and very angry neighbours, I assume).
  - tigen 3y ago
    There also are cultural norms and/or enforcement around stuff like loud cars or trucks. I visited Asian cities recently and did not notice offensive noise. No crazy/rowdy yelling people, quiet buses. I slept in quieter neighborhoods but they were still dense.
    - ehnto 3y ago
      I do actually imagine a rough transition period for some in denser housing in places like America and Australia. I don't think we quite have the outward thoughtfulness as a societal norm, that makes it work in some cultures.

walterbell 3y ago

Disposable earplugs can quiet planes, trains, autos and their respective ports.

quickthrower2 3y ago
Ah an adblocker! How dare you not support them, how will they stay in business? ;-)

spiggytopes 3y ago

'Your call is important to us.' Yeah, but clearly not important enough to justify hiring enough staff. This drives me crazy!

ipython 3y ago
But don’t forget, “today we are experiencing higher than normal call volume”- yeah today and the other 364 days of the year…
quickthrower2 3y ago
It is worse than that. They say it, stopping the musak with a slightly noisy pause first which almost sounds like someone picked up the phone so now I need to pay attention for the 4 hours it takes to get through not just zone out and code. It then become asshole design when they add 3 rings before that pause as if you finally are getting through! Evil phone system designers!
- nerdponx 3y ago
  I always wondered why they did that. Is it supposed to fool you into thinking stuff is happening in the background? Like the computers are working really hard on your case, just be patient?
andra_nl 3y ago
Yeah, for me that one's right up there with every cookie-cutter cookie-prompt on every website. "We care about your privacy" no. you. do. not. Please don't pretend.
randomdata 3y ago
"Your call is important to us" but not "Your reason for calling is important to us". When the call is what is considered important, isn't prolonging the call the ideal?

sixstringtheory 3y ago

Webpage is getting hugged; https://web.archive.org/web/20230830223743/https://askthepilot.com/airport-noise-scourge/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230830223743/https://askthepil...

sixstringtheory 3y ago

We’ve flown several times with our small child, who has been woken so many times by pointless PA announcements on the plane and in the airport. Life already sucks in coach seating, OK? Just let us suffer in peace!

langsoul-com 3y ago

I'd say one of the bigger issues is due to how legal everything has become. Most of those air cabin PA announcements are necessary to legally cover their asses. I doubt am airline would want to find out what happens in court if they didn't give those ps announcements.

jhugo 3y ago
There's big variation between airlines, though, so I think that's not the entire explanation. In many cases I think that there is nobody involved with the decision of which announcements to include who really has the job of caring about the overall passenger experience. In some airlines in Asia you get every announcement in three languages, and your IFE is interrupted by all of them, regardless of whether you understand just one. Even worse, they put short pauses between them, teasing you with a couple seconds of your movie before interrupting it again. A basic level of care would be to interrupt the IFE only for the language you had chosen for the IFE when you first sat down.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  They can't really rely on the IFE being set to the correct language. I can read enough of several languages to navigate the menus, choose a film and so on, but not enough to understand the safety briefing. Many people won't touch the IFE at all, especially before take off.
  - jhugo 3y ago
    In case you didn't touch it, it can of course just interrupt the IFE for all three languages, since you're apparently not using it anyway.

ipython 3y ago

But without the in flight PA announcements how else would you be aware of the special offer for the branded airline card? I almost feel bad for the attendants slowly walking down the aisle afterward sadly holding up the offer paperwork after the announcement while everyone sits there annoyed waiting to land.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jhugo 3y ago

Passing through Jakarta airport the other day, there was an announcement which was literally on a continuous loop with no pause in between. It was only about 15 seconds long. Considering I couldn't understand a word of it, after a short while my mind drifted to a mental playback of the "corporate accounts payable Nina speaking - just a moment" scene from Office Space. Nobody around me seemed to be disturbed by it at all, though.

resolutebat 3y ago
Jakarta's airport and the general Indonesian attitude towards regulations was for me encapsulated in seeing an air conditioner unit in the domestic airport with prominent NO SMOKING/NO SITTING signs, with an Indonesian dude happily perched on top smoking kretek like a chimney.

acyou 3y ago

Complain about too much communication. Complain about too little. The happy medium is somewhere in the middle. The stressors are the complainers and extremists (author of this article included).

Ensorceled 3y ago
The absolute worst are the people smugly complaining about the complaining without a stitch of irony.

Symbiote 3y ago

Apparently I'm spoilt, as the airports I use most often (Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London Heathrow) are all quiet, with no announcements until at the gate when boarding behind. Though every time I travel by train in England, they seem to have added more pointless drivel to the railway station security announcement. ("This is a security announcement. Please do not leave baggage unattended anywhere on the station. Any unattended articles may be removed and destroyed by the security services. If you see anything suspicious, please tell a member of staff. Remember, see it, say it, sorted." Back when the IRA were actually leaving bombs around, we only needed the italic bit.)

jgb1984 3y ago

More disturbing to me is how loud it gets when you're actually on the airplane. The plane itself is very loud, that can't be helped I guess, but the crew seemingly has to shout irrelevant things at you every five minutes through that awful megaphone style onboard speaker system. For the millionth time some safety instructions, then welcome this, goodbye that, please buy perfume, please buy lottery cards, please reserve a shuttle taxi, and so on. All very loud, and combined with a sound quality that reminds me of a 20 bucks portable radio makes for a miserable experience. I vote for quiet airplanes in addition to quiet airports!

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago

This is really about the scourge of useless "communications." California is the epicenter of this BS. They actually have announcements called "sigalerts" and "red flag warnings." The incontrovertible failure of those names is inherent in their meaninglessness.