Airline Environment - Public Address Systems
 

What announcements do you hear routinely on the PA systems of given airports?

How do they affect the quality of your time in airports?

Have they helped you?

I'm asking because it might make it more bearable for me to know that at least somebody is getting some benefit out of what sounds to me like relentless electronic nagging (I'm thinking of one airport in particular, not all are as bad.)

"I'm thinking of one airport in particular ..."

Halifax, by any chance? I have been in a lot of airports in the last decade and I have never heard announcements as aggravating as the ones they play every few minutes. If I had to live with that voice I'd shoot myself.

Anselm

We had some time to kill in Schiphol about a year and a half ago and kept hearing the following announcement (different names and details each time):

"Attention passenger [name]. Please report immediately to gate [number] for [airline] flight [number] to [destination]. You are delaying the departure of this flight."

It was amusing the first few times and then started to get old.

O'Hare has the frequent, "Smoking is not permitted in O'Hare International Airport..." announcement, but after hearing it hundreds of times, I more or less don't notice it anymore.

I recall LAX has the announcements threatening to tow cars and not being obliged to donate to charity collectors.

Anselm, Halifax is bad enough: Toronto Pearson Terminal 1 is worse.

WELCOME to Toronto Pearson International Airport. For the benefit and comfort of passengers, this is a nonsmoking terminal....please confine your smoking to the designated smoking areas.

ATTENTION Air Canada passengers. This is the final boarding call for flight xxx for Chicago/Vancouver/Moncton/Igualuit/
Thunder Bay/ Moose's Armpit/Regina Monologues/Saskatoon. Flight xxx is now ready for departure from gate n. All passengers should now be on board....

WELCOME to Toronto Pearson International airport. If you are actually listening to this nonsmoking announcement, you probably are seriously considering taking up the habit.

LADIES and gentlemen, for the safety and security of the airport, please do not leave your personal belongings unattended. Of course, if you can't even pay attention to your personal belongings, or even just your impersonal belongings, you probably aren't paying attention to this announcement.

ATTENTION Air Canada passengers. Flight xxx is leaving. All passengers should now be on board, where they can't hear this announcement. Mr. Rashid, are you listening to me? You should be at the gate by now. I SAID, flight xxx is leaving. Jimmy, get rid of that gum....

WELCOME to Toronto Pearson International airport. All passengers should seek a nonsmoking area as the terminal is on fire and if your area isn't smoking now, it soon will be.

(contributions solicited....)

At LAX, you will hear: "The white zone is for the immediate loading and unloading of passengers. No parking."

ms_go,
Don't forget the "we will proceed to offload your luggage" part.

Oh and (for the moving walkways) "mind your step... mind your step... mind your step... mind your step... mind your step... mind your step..."

The way I look at this, even though we could say the words to the recorded announcements we've heard so much, there will always be a first-timer there who has never been in an airport or never flown before. That's really who they are for.

Not an airport announcement, but I'm so sick of "Between Us", the Air France boarding and telephone hold song. Makes me want to hang up the phone immediately.

My favorite is the 3-1-1 liquids restrictions announcements in the gate areas at O'Hare. Duh! If you made it to the gate you already know about the rules (or learned about them at security when they took your stuff away) Actually what I hate more is the TV on in gate areas. Has no one heard of closed captions so that the rest of us can enjoy a bit of peace and quiet?

Jeff_Costa_Rica

You raise a good point about first time travelers. On the other hand, does this kind of information distribution really help all that much? Are there better alternatives? Especially since not all airports can indulge first time or indeed any travelers with routine departure announcements. I'm thinking of the extremely busy ones (e.g. Heathrow - LHR) where the frequency of departures would make this impractical.

Vancouver International certainly agrees - you don't get that barrage of "all passengers should now be on board" business there (at least, not outside the vicinity of the immediate gate.)

I dunno, I wonder how much of it is for the benefit of the airport. It's true that unattended bags, stranded people whose cars have been towed, irate passengers complaining about smoke in nonsmoking areas, etc. etc. all constitute situations they'd no doubt like to avoid. Still, there's something a bit worrisome about a place jammed full of people who are either numbed by too many announcements, or stressed out because of them.

There's gotta be a better mousetrap, or at least a better way of communicating the essentials about airport information, fellow Fodorites. I propose we 'design' just such a mousetrap. C'mon, ante up, how could airports do this job better?

Couple of years ago, Cologne airport in Germany started to use the German voices (from dubbing the movies) of Pierce Brosnan and Julia Roberts for the usual public announcements.
Having James Bond on the PA telling you not to leave your baggage unattended had somewhat of an authority :-)

But in general I think that those people who would need to listen to those announcements are in fact those who are so stressed, flippant, or un-focused that they make those mistakes in the heat of the action. They are probably the least to listen, understand, and act accordingly to what is being announced.

Actually, most announcements have such poor acoustics I can't understand a word of what they are saying over the noise in the airport. They are useless to me.


Male announcer: The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in a red zone.

Female announcer: The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in a red zone.

Male announcer: The red zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in a white zone.

Female announcer: No, the white zone is for loading. Now, there is no stopping in a RED zone.

Male announcer: The red zone has always been for loading.

Female announcer: Don't you tell me which zone is for loading, and which zone is for unloading.

Male announcer: Look Betty, don't start up with your white zone shit again. There's just no stopping in a white zone.

Female announcer: Oh really, Vernon? Why pretend, we both know perfectly well what this is about. You want me to have an abortion.

Male announcer: It's really the only sensible thing to do, if its done safely. Therapeutically there's no danger involved.

" If anyone gives you or attempts to give you baggage, please notify airport personnell." and my personal best on the air plane is "Todays flight is a non-smoking flight" ha

For me, it's very comforting to hear "look out for unattended bags" AFTER going trough security!

:-p

The constant reminders that "this airport is a non-smoking facility" make smokers crave a cigarette worse than anything else could.