Airports: Controlling Noise to Create a Better Experience (transcript)

Host (Wesley Slover): Airports are sonic hellscapes. As an anxious traveler and a sound designer, I often think about how the lack of intentional sound design affects public spaces like these. This is the Collab Collection, where we gather stories and insights about creative collaboration. To understand how we can improve these built environments, I spoke with Christopher Birch, the guest experience director for the airport in San Francisco, California.

Christopher Birch: Our focus at SFO is customer advocacy and ensuring all agencies are aligned to provide the best possible traveler experience. Around 2016, our surveys showed that travelers were frustrated by noise, specifically announcements that didn't pertain to them. In 2020, we executed an initiative to ban airlines from making airport-wide announcements when the information was only relevant to a specific gate area. We also eliminated "canned" or scheduled recorded announcements and restricted music from vendors unless their spaces were enclosed by walls.

Host (Wesley Slover): A significant part of this shift came from reconfiguring paging zones. Instead of blasting audio everywhere, announcements are now restricted to specific relevant areas, such as a departure level or a single terminal. Interestingly, SFO found that fewer announcements actually enhanced communication because travelers were more likely to listen to the messages that remained. They even removed "no smoking" announcements, which had become redundant over decades, without seeing any uptick in indoor smoking.

Christopher Birch: This "Quiet Airport" program was extremely cheap to implement because it required no new equipment or consultants. It has been a wellness initiative that reduces traveler anxiety. Furthermore, increasing overall traveler satisfaction has a larger impact on revenue than simply increasing passenger volume or commercial space, as it makes it cheaper for airlines to operate and offer more routes. Today, terminal-wide exposure to announcements at SFO has been reduced by 77%.

Host (Wesley Slover): While SFO focused on limitations, I also spoke with Johannes Sittig, CEO of the US subsidiary of Sittig Technologies, whose company uses technology to manage these challenges through intelligent automation.

Johannes Sittig: The problem with the "silent airport" concept used in places like Amsterdam or Mumbai is that it is often "zero or one"—either there are no announcements at all or they are blasted everywhere. If there are zero announcements, passengers from different languages or those who are infrequent travelers get nervous and can miss their flights. Our goal is a "middle way" using targeted automation via pre-recorded and AI speech.

Johannes Sittig: For example, at the Berlin airport, we use ceiling sensors to track security wait times. If the wait is under 15 minutes, we stop automated security reminders because the process is already moving fast enough and constant repetition just makes staff and passengers "crazy." If wait times exceed 15 minutes, the system starts the announcements again to help prepare people for the checkpoint. We also help airlines automate boarding, which saves 5 to 10 minutes of staff time per flight and ensures names are pronounced correctly using AI.

Host (Wesley Slover): Johannes even put his AI to the test with my own name.

AI Voice: Wesley Slover, please speak to a representative.

Host (Wesley Slover): It is exciting to see how these small changes can meaningfully reduce stress in our daily lives. Christopher hopes this "Quiet Airport" concept will spread to other locations, influenced by local culture and creativity.

This episode was written and produced by me, Wesley Slover, with help from Jake Merritt and mixed by Trevor Richardson. Our visual branding was created by Audrey Haby. If you have thoughts on collaboration, email us at the collab collection at sanctis.audio. We are a project of Sanctus Audio, a sound and music design studio; hear our work at sanctus.audio.