Ask the pilot

What's the matter with airports? A tour of the loudest, weirdest and ugliest problems on the concourse.

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Business, Airports, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

April 7, 2006 | Two Fridays ago, USA Today's weekly "Destinations and Diversions" section ran a spotlight on airports. Drawing from the practical and peculiar features of various terminals around the country, staff writer Gene Sloan constructed a fantasy list of, at least in his mind, the perfect airport. His list of amenities that every airport should have ranged from the obvious and sensible (free wireless Internet, convenience stores) to the curious and esoteric (wine bars, rocking chairs). Actually, Sloan's layover Shangri-La sounds a lot like many places in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, where airports tend to be more pleasant and in sync with their core mission -- processing, comforting and distracting thousands of people for hours at a time. Singapore's unbeatable Changi Airport, for instance, might lack a wine bar, but it does have a swimming pool, a fitness center, a movie theater (free entry), waterfalls and koi ponds.

I'm usually not one for the derivative knockoff route, but Sloan's picks got me thinking.

My own fantasy terminal is pretty straightforward. It's a spacious, architecturally compelling place with cathedral ceilings (Washington-Reagan) and flooded with natural light (Chicago-O'Hare). It has a grand central atrium with centralized check-in (Frankfurt, Hong Kong). There is interior landscaping (Singapore). There is a public transportation link to and from the city center with in-terminal access (Amsterdam) and a minimum of fuss -- a rail connection that doesn't require a bus-to-train transfer (Boston), and that allows you to check your luggage at the downtown station (Kuala Lumpur). There are lockers and/or luggage storage facilities (Atlanta). And, most critical of all, there are concourse bookstores with common sense enough to stock copies of my bloody book (nowhere).

But, if you ask me, the biggest problem with airports isn't something that's missing, exactly, but something plentifully and excruciatingly abundant. Namely, I'm talking about noise. Not the window-rattling roar of jet engines, but the nerve-rattling clamor of kids, televisions, cellphones and loudspeakers inside the terminal. If there's one sorely lacking amenity, it's peace and quiet.

Even worse than the culinary abomination that is a Chick-fil-A sandwich, noise pollution is the No. 1 airport scourge. There are many individual sonic culprits, but the worst offenders are a first-place tie between shrieking children and those infernal gate-side television screens. The latter began appearing about 10 years ago, and today they hang from the ceiling at, it seems, virtually every gate in the country. At more than 40 of the busiest airports across America, the screens blare their signature product, CNN Airport Network -- a special broadcast culled from the cable giant's "Headline News" program (carefully scrubbed of stories pertaining to crashes or other airline mishaps -- a policy that caused the entire network's shutdown on Sept. 11). Because the segments are on video loop, naturally, you get to hear the same celebrity gossip 11 times over the course of a maintenance delay.

At an airport a few evenings ago I had several hours to kill and was searching desperately for a spot to relax and read. Short of staking out a seat in the men's room, the booming of television into every nook and cranny of the building made this impossible. Even though it was late at night and the terminal was uncrowded, the shrill play-by-play of a March Madness basketball game was piped everywhere -- even into a distant cluster of gates totally void of people.

The jabbering TV sets are intrusive enough, but multiple public address announcements only make things worse. Security warnings, boarding calls and passenger paging announcements often overlap, and it's not uncommon to be under bombardment by three or more simultaneously blaring P.A.s.

Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson may be the most eardrum-unfriendly facility in the world, with its claustrophobic architecture and sardine-can concourse traffic. Seated in one ATL boarding zone on a recent afternoon, a passenger was subject to the following, multilayered sonic siege:

Two over-volumed CNN Airport Network monitors; four cellphone conversations; three simultaneous public address announcements (one security, one delayed boarding call, the third totally unintelligible); two screeching infants; and the hideous, high-pitched beep-beep-beep-beep-beep of a motorized electric cart. That, in addition to expected, low-register background noise emitted by hundreds of people crammed into a too-small space.

So, how about outfitting airports with quiet zones -- designated areas where phone chatter, kids and public address nonsense are banned. We make accommodations for smokers -- and pilots, I might add, help the local neighborhoods by adhering to complicated noise-abatement departure paths -- so why not assist those customers brought to the brink of lunacy by the mad cacophony of technology and colic? Airports could take a cue from Amtrak's so-called Quiet Cars. (And if they insist on sucking up so much electricity, instead of using it to drive people crazy, how about, as the USA Today piece smartly recommended, offering it in the form of power ports, where people can charge up their laptops?)

At least for me, stepping onto the airplane provides a welcome sense of peace that is almost palpable. All the more reason to be concerned -- very, very concerned -- that once again the FCC and airlines are considering lifting the in-flight cellphones ban, a move guaranteed to push the experience of modern air travel from one of tolerable frustration to sheer hell. If you are one of the 30 percent of surveyed fliers who allegedly think this is good idea, please share with us your wisdom. The rest of us will keep our fingers crossed and our earplugs ready.

Next page: Why don't Americans know how to behave on an escalator?