Picture this: You’re sitting in a peaceful airport lounge, an oasis away from the bustling terminal, sipping on your favourite drink while enjoying a picturesque view out the window. Suddenly, a noisy announcement pierces the silence.

“Flight 39 to Jakarta is now boarding through gate 10.” Then, a minute later: “We regret to inform passengers travelling to Auckland on flight 157 that this service is delayed due to operational requirements, your new departure time will be 8 pm and we apologise for the inconvenience”. Neither of these were your flights and the information is irrelevant to you, but the constant announcements are rather disruptive.

Now, imagine a different scenario. You’re blissfully relaxing in a silent airport lounge, sipping on your favourite drink and taking in the view of planes coming and going. Suddenly, your heart sinks as you spot your own plane taxiing out towards the runway. You look down at your watch and realise that your flight already closed ten minutes ago.

The silent airport concept

In most airport lounges and terminals, it’s standard to hear lots of announcements calling flights, paging passengers, advising of gate changes, or many other things. In some US airports, there are even regular announcements advising of the time and the location of certain facilities, as well as constant security-related announcements.

If you’ve ever sat in an airport terminal where there are constant, noisy announcements – and you’re trying to relax or perhaps even make a phone call – you can probably understand why some airports and lounges have removed all announcements.

For example, there are no announcements in the shared areas of Singapore Changi Airport. Only people waiting in the gate area for a specific flight can hear boarding announcements for that specific flight.

Some airport lounges have also done away with boarding announcements. For example, the Thai Airways Business Class lounges in Bangkok have signs everywhere advising that no announcements will be made.

The case for silent airports

I usually keep an eye on the time and pay attention to the flight display board anyway, and I’ll make sure that I get to my boarding gate in time. So, I personally prefer silent airports.

In airports and lounges where regular announcements are made, some people may even get complacent and ignore the time or display boards as they’re waiting for a boarding announcement. But if they happen to miss the announcement (or, as occasionally happens, the lounge staff forget to make one!), they could miss their flight.

Airports are already full of stimuli that can induce stress in passengers. While the noise pollution is simply annoying for most, it can be particularly challenging for people with sensory processing difficulties. This is one of the reasons that Woolworths introduced a “quiet hour” where it dims the lights and switches the music off.

The lack of noise pollution creates a much more calm and relaxing atmosphere for everyone.

The case against silent airports

Unfortunately, the lack of announcements can help some passengers to relax so much that they forget to board their flight! In that sense, it’s probably necessary for people to be at least a little bit stressed in airports so they remember to go to their boarding gate on time.

People connecting between flights might also forget to adjust their watches to the local time zone at the intermediate airport, missing their onward connections as a result.

For whatever reason, people do sometimes forget to board their flights. If airport staff are unable to at least try to page those passengers, due to a “silent terminal” policy, this could delay flights as staff need to either manually search for the missing passengers or offload them (and potentially their bags). In these cases, airport staff could try to call the passenger – but there’s no guarantee they will have their phone switched on, particularly if in international transit.

As a compromise, some airports have adopted a policy of not announcing boarding for flights – but still paging passengers who’ve failed to board. Unfortunately, this often results in constant announcements made by airport staff – who are often yelling and sound panicked – demanding that Mr Smith and Mrs Anderson come to the gate immediately as offloading procedures have commenced. That’s a great way to reduce stress in airports, eh?!

It can also be helpful when lounges do call boarding for flights because it’s otherwise difficult to know when a flight will actually start boarding. If I’m sitting in a silent airport lounge, I’ll often leave a bit earlier than I otherwise would so that I don’t miss my flight. But it can be a bit frustrating to walk to the gate and then find that the aircraft hasn’t even arrived yet.

What do you prefer?

Are you a fan of silent airport terminals? Let us know on the AFF forum!

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.