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.

Not exactly the same thing, but I was flying from SFO to the east coast and this stood out to me:

At SFO: "Welcome to San Francisco! Please feel free to relax in our yoga and meditation rooms."

At DTW: "Welcome to Detroit. Remember to cover your face when you sneeze."

Totally different vibes.

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 https://www.tvbgone.com/ 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!

But how am I going to know the white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the red zone. ?

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.

This is my current favorite airport album. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orph%C3%A9e_(album)

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Calgary and Edmonton airports are also like this, and I agree that it makes being in the airport so much more pleasant.

(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)

Has anyone actually heard Eno at the airport? What is it like? Does it actually calm you?

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 that is always there.

I'd love to also have a low smell airport.

So many airports direct passenger flow through a shopping zone drenched in perfume fumes. Disgusting as far as I'm concerned.

Not to mention the screaming visual pollution of course.

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