Airport observations

So many airport ticket agents spend their work hours in terrible environments. In particular, I notice the noise level. Baggage belts and security scanners can be deafening, and they are constant. Screeching security door alarms and PA announcements add additional layers of racket.

I’m amazed at how little attention is paid to the sound of things, especially things that people have to work with day in and day out. Airports have a lot of these sounds. I guess it’s assumed that the target market passes through these irritations briefly and seldom, making them ignorable. But what about frequent flyers, like me, and airport employees?

Take the electric carts that carry late, handicapped, tired, or overburdened people to and from the gates. Some carts are silent, but in some airports, they beep with a piercing insistence whenever they are in use. Those poor drivers! Inter-terminal trains and trams: some, such as those at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas, beep-beep-beep blastingly to signal the approach of the next tram. At the gates, jetway doors shriek shrilly when opened, or when they simply misbehave. And the sound I most dislike? TSA employees who pace the security line and shout orders like boot camp drill sergeants. I spend a lot of time in airports, so I have time to notice these things.

Alaska Airlines notices, too. The company provides custom earplugs to its flight attendants (though not free—they pay half). The earplugs are individually molded to their ears and muffle the engine roar while allowing them to hear voices. Wonderful. Yet, only half the airline attendants were wearing them, on the recent flights I took.

At the other extreme, Air Canada forced me to remove earplugs during takeoff and landing. “It’s a Canadian law,” the flight attendant said.

There’s a funny sign at the international terminal at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas: “No liquids or snow globes past security.”

I love the various scooters employees zip around on in Scandinavian airports. The police use Segways at O’Hare.