SFO Quiet Airport (2025) | Hacker News Reader

SFO Quiet Airport (2025)

viewfromthewing.com

153 pointsCaliforniaKarl96 comments

I had to sleep overnight in the phoenix airport once. All night long a loud speaker was repeating at high volume "Caution: the moving walkway is coming to an end." I remember wishing that it would indeed come to an end.

No materials on the escalator

The white zone is for loading and unloading only. There is no stopping in the red zone.

The red zone is for loading and unloading only. There is no stopping in the white zone.

The red zone has always been for loading and unloading. There's never stopping in a WHITE zone.

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

The really fun part is that the couple who read those lines in the movie Airplane actually had been announcers at, IIRC, LAX airport. They must have had a great time doing the movie.

The actual quote, both from the movie and IRL is: "The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only."

Hit the E-stop button next time. The belt will stop and won't get restarted until the morning when a maintenance guy comes around.

I'm sure the belt will stop, I'm less sure the audio will.

That sounds like a great way to get tossed out of an airport.

Sir this is hacker news not hall monitor news

I’m not the hall monitor. I appreciate a good hack. But I’ve also been around the hall monitors enough to recognize what behavior is likely to summon them.

I don’t particularly care if someone shuts up an obnoxious, unused piece of equipment. The armed federal hall monitors running the place probably see it differently.

Sounds like ill advice. Have great potential to discover the authentic beauty of Amtrak and Greyhound modes of traveling.

Generally the e-stop button will trigger an e-stop alarm of some sort: buzzer or horn, mandated by regulations.

Those walkways are only in between each set of gates, there aren’t any actually near gates or anywhere near seating. Where did you sleep lol?

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

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

...

Same problem at LAS, SLC, and DEN.

Whenever I have an overnight layover in any of these airports I now pack NIOSH certified ear muffs, along with an eye mask.

I look ridiculous, but I don’t care.

Besides making the airport more pleasant, targeting announcements to the relevant travelers also means they are much more likely to be heard. When 99% of announcements are irrelevant, we just mentally screen them out.

I had this experience starting a new company recently.

Every single SaaS product seemed to have a dozen onboarding floating modals that need to be dismissed. It would have been impossible to read them all. In most cases I had used the product a lot before but I simply had a new corporate email so they thought I was a new user.

So if any said anything important I wouldn’t know because I had to dismiss them all.

This is why Intercom and Pendo are in my adblock list. Enough pop overs!

I didn't realise that "quiet airport" still means there are targeted announcements

The idea is they first try to reach you via the app (I believe) and then announce to the area around the gate only - instead of all announcements going to the entire terminal.

See "Alarm fatigue" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue

I agree... in early 2000, at Colombo (Sri Lanka) airport, they were calling my name, over and over, but never picked it up. I started to pay attention when some dispatched army guys (it was after the 2001 Tamil Tigers attack at the airport) were screening everyone at the airport asking for my name... ops sorry.

I feel like you’ve held back on an interesting story

Not exactly the same thing, but I was flying from SFO to the east coast and this stood out to me:

At SFO: "Welcome to San Francisco! Please feel free to relax in our yoga and meditation rooms."

At DTW: "Welcome to Detroit. Remember to cover your face when you sneeze."

Totally different vibes.

I always like the differences in the ads.

SFO: "Use our AI startup!"

DCA: "Buy our warship!"

Go to Louisville -- it's all BOURBON.

Ha. Last time I went through DCA the ads were all "Here's why TikTok isn't evil!"

But usually they are "here's why Palantir isn't evil". Actually, they are "Palantir is evil and that's awesome!"

"In New York, all the advertising on the streets and on the subway assumes that you, the person reading, are an ambiently depressed twenty-eight-year-old office worker whose main interests are listening to podcasts, ordering delivery, and voting for the Democrats. I thought I found that annoying, but in San Francisco they don’t bother advertising normal things at all. The city is temperate and brightly colored, with plenty of pleasant trees, but on every corner it speaks to you in an aggressively alien nonsense. Here the world automatically assumes that instead of wanting food or drinks or a new phone or car, what you want is some kind of arcane B2B service for your startup" - Sam Kriss

I haven’t lived in NYC for more than 20 years, but I still associate it with Dr Zizmor, a dermatologist. His ads were all over the subway.

He retired not too long ago. I know because it was notable enough to deserve a feature in the NY Times.

I remember those ads...

Here, the infamous one are these James Wang, Esq ads on the placemats for Chinese restaurants in the area. I suspect he placed the ad 20 years ago but they never bothered to change the design...

I grew up in NJ in the 80s, and his ads were all over network TV as well. Man, that's a name I haven't thought of in a long time.

I didn't grow up in New York but my wife did, and I think she's mentioned this name before. There's also this specific law practice that would advertise everywhere that I forget the name of that used to have two lawyers in the name but now only has one, which apparently is quite jarring a lot of people who grew up here and were used to the old ads.

Given how I grew up relatively close to here from a regional perspective (in the Boston area), I was not at all prepared for just how many specific cultural references there are in New York that I would not be familiar with. My in-laws were mildly scandalized by the fact that I had not heard of "Fudgie the Whale" when the topic came up in the first year my wife and I dated.

Late night TV in LA: "It's Cal Worthington and his dog Spot!" He'd buy up every commercial slot and just run the same ad over and over. He's long gone but his ads live on in my head.

Pussy cow, pussy cow, pussy cow!

Unfortunately, the B2B SaaS ads have started infecting the subway as well.

Also DTW having everything in Japanese, I'm guessing cause of the auto industry

Detroit sounds really cool. If I were a young person, I would look for a cheap, once-great, up-and-coming city where I could make my mark, with lots of other young people doing the same thing. The other one is Richmond, VA. There is a secret underground of young, smart, kind people moving there.

But how am I going to know the white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the red zone. ?

The red zone has always been for loading and unloading of passengers. There's never stopping in a white zone.

Don't you tell me which zone is for loading, and which zone is for stopping!

Is that just in LAX or everywhere? Cause that scene was still relevant in 2000s LAX

I've been in a lot of airports, not LAX, and I've never heard voice announcements about loading zones. Most airports just have separate directions for drop off vs parking, and since a terrorist attempted to ram-raid Glasgow airport, neither are near the terminal itself in a lot of cases.

Interesting, the directors of Airplane! couldn't get actors with "authenticity" for the anouncers, so they hired the actual LAX announcers.

This is a nice idea. I don't remember the last time I walked through an airport without noise cancelling earbuds and my own music playing. The noise level definitely adds to the stress if you are a frequent traveler.

This is my current favorite airport album. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orph%C3%A9e_(album)

Thank you for this! Such a sad demise for the composer. Amazing music, added to my playlist.

Absolutely, Johan is one of my all time favorite composers and as prolific and talented as he was, it's terrible that we will never hear new music from him again. :(

I thought you were going to link Brian Eno’s Music for Airports

> intent of defusing the anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal as an alternative to "canned" Muzak and easy listening styles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_1:_Music_for_Airports

I wish they would do this when you're boarding the plane. I get that there is essential information that everyone needs to know, but if you're a frequent flier you've probably heard the "put your larger carry-on in the overhead bin and your smaller bag underneath the seat in front of you" hundreds, if not thousands of times.

Especially flying with kids at naptime or bedtime. Trying to get an extremely tired toddler to fall asleep on a plane just to hear an announcement about in flight entertainment. OMG.

There's a large subpopulation of people flying who seem to have no idea how planes and airports work. Maybe they're sleep deprived or it's their first time flying, but these announcements are targeted at them.

I think its more likely that the people do know they just don't care and it helps them to put their backpack overhead so they do it anyways. There is minimal/no enforcement.

I'm very much a we-live-in-a-society, follow the rules kind of guy, but if I checked a bag and only have my backpack in the cabin, you bet your ass I'm going to try and find a place for it in the overhead instead of cluttering up where I want to put my feet. The flight attendants can go scold the passenger with the oversized roller + backpack + 20 liter "purse" instead.

Yes, the logical rule would be 1 bag in the overhead per person. If they enforced carry-on sizes strictly and charged less for checked luggage the problem would probably go away.

It has nothing to do with price. I don't check luggage on domestic flights because of the enormous time lag for the airport to give me back my luggage. (There's also "United Breaks Guitars", but that's an independent problem)

If I could walk from the plane to the luggage area and my luggage was already there 90% of the time, I probably would check more things.

However, the US airports simply don't employ enough people to move the luggage around fast enough.

The is 100% correctable by employing more people. But some CEO needs another yacht, so they don't. So, I simply don't check luggage.

Unfortunately there's also a large subpopulation of people flying who wear noise-cancelling headphones and have their eyes glued to their phones; choosing to be disengaged from their immediate surroundings.

I remember one time I had to fly back from a business trip on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Made me realize there is something about business travelers, they cut towards situationally aware and self conscientious types. The opposite of people flying the day before Thanksgiving.

I flew into the Orange County Airport before they tore it down and made it like the others. Felt very civilized. As I get older I find the hostile public spaces and infrastructure more and more annoying.

There is apparently 10000 people every day who learn about it for the first time, according to https://xkcd.com/1053/

There is a large and growing population of people leaving their home country for the first time ever, let alone by plane.

Much much worse are the repeated advertisement “announcements” about signing up for their credit card or frequent flyer program

That particular rule kinda depends on the airline and how full the flight is

One of my formative consulting projects in like 2002 or 2003 was in St. Louis, where couple of hundred of accenture and avanade and microsofties got together for like 6 months week after week to hack on a large software project for multiple states. It was a total crazy show but who cares. I had to take a red eye from west coast to Chicago which landed at 5, then take a 7am to St. Louis. I found some places to just lay there for 2 hours in Ohare, which is already hard. But they all had those TVs that were blasting CNN. I was smart and bought a legendary TV-B-Gone https://www.tvbgone.com/ and it would work on those! And on so many other tvs out there, from the sports bars to obscure brands in the airport shuttle buses. Thank you TV-B-Gone!

Burbank Airport used to get recognizable celebrities to record the canned public announcements in their own style. I seem to recall Joan Rivers, Henny Youngman, Jerry Seinfeld, etc. It took some of the edge off while you waited around, at least for a bit. Don't know if this continues.

It's not just announcements. SLC (at least) used to have TVs playing the "Airport Channel". Last time I went through there (and maybe the time before?), they were gone. It makes a big difference. You still have announcements, but at least the announcements aren't cutting through some TV noise that you don't care about that is always there.

The Calgary and Edmonton airports are also like this, and I agree that it makes being in the airport so much more pleasant.

(I think that all the Canadian airports might be similarly quiet, but I haven't flown through them recently so I'm not entirely sure)

I strongly recommend the Dawson City airport because they don't have security. The whole experience is much more pleasant.

All of New Zealand does this internally. You only need to go through security for international flights. You can show up 5 minutes before the flight.

My home airport. I can confirm that this is a (relatively) quiet airport. I wish they had a meditation space. Knowing SF, it's probably coming.

There is the Berman Reflection Room at SFO.

There are Yoga rooms in terminals 1, 2, and 3

Has anyone actually heard Eno at the airport? What is it like? Does it actually calm you?

I was hoping to see discussion of this - to my knowledge it was sold to a few airports who removed it after it was poorly received: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twentieth-century-mu...

Personally 1/1 has been absolutely sublime for me as a tool for meditation, but I don't know that I could imagine it in an airport.

Yeah, 1/1 is one song I always keep downloaded to my phone for this reason!

Thanks for that article, love to read about well intended design being poorly received.

Enjoy; I especially liked learning of the 'rebuttal' album that the Black Dog released lol

No, but I’ve heard Aphex Twin in an aquarium once. Bristol (UK) for anyone interested, which fits.

Was it in that kind of touristy area filled with children? I didn’t think to go in.

Is this a regular thing?!

I was waiting for a flight at SFO, trying to get some work done. Two airport employees were sitting at the next table. One of them started watching a video on her phone, on speaker, at loud volume. I politely asked her to use headphones or turn off the sound. Hey retort: "this is an airport!". I replied that it's a 'quiet airport' but her reaction suggested to me that she was not familiar with the concept.

"Quiet airport" doesn't mean this

It is what quiet airport means, at least in the context of SFO.

SFO's quiet airport policy is described on page 17 of this document: https://www.flysfo.com/sites/default/files/2025-12/2025-10%2...

Here are two quotations from that policy, directly relevant to the situation I described:

  "The playing of music is prohibited in the following locations: at the podiums, ticket counters, and seating areas adjacent to gates"

  "employees may not use mobile devices, including smart phones and tablets, in “speaker mode” in any public area of the Airport"

The international arrivals section of Vancouver airport is a great example of this. Indoor waterfalls, sound dampening on the walls and ceilings, carpeted floors and wide open space is a huge relief after a 5-15 hr flight. It's also an excellent way of making a great first impression on visitors.

The new Berlin Brandenburg airport is the most quiet and lovely I've seen to date: https://onemileatatime.com/berlin-brandenburg-airport-review...

The one time I flew from Austin, there was a band playing at a restaurant in the ticketed area. Going through security it was bad (you could only really hear the drums) but once I was through it was downright painful. Really makes you wonder how these decisions get made.

I have this theory that all sorts of stimuli exhaust our nervous system: be it auditory, wind stimulation of skin, shaking or even smells. That's why people get tired flying on airplane, spending a day outside seemingly doing nothing, etc etc

I'd love to also have a low smell airport.

So many airports direct passenger flow through a shopping zone drenched in perfume fumes. Disgusting as far as I'm concerned.

Not to mention the screaming visual pollution of course.

Came here to say just that. Smell and visual noise is rampant in most international Airports, especially the duty free areas.

The smell of jet (and ground vehicle) exhaust is pervasive. It can't be good to breathe.

This is wonderful. I remember I was in Asia in 2000 relaxing at the airport and was puzzled why it felt so nice and peaceful. Then I realized that it was the lack of repetitive pointless announcements.

SFO is so nice just because of this. I hope other airports follow.

Harvey Milk Terminal 1 is my happy place.

Noise pollution in public spaces is a widespread problem. Maybe given the success at SFO we can institute and enforce of noise limits elsewhere.

Title: San Francisco Airport Removed 90 Minutes of Daily Noise — Travelers Say It Changed Everything

SFO is one of the nicest and cleanest airports I frequently transit through. I am from Florida.

the biggest problem with SFO is all the delayed flights from weather/wind or some other logistical hassle. Usually I try to fly into SJC instead

Newly renovated (and beautiful) PDX does this too

Reply on news.ycombinator.com