Brad Ideas - Can airports do paging as well as a restaurant? - Comments

my favorite one to hate

Nikita — Sat, 30 May 2009 11:23:19 -0700

O'Hare has constant 3-1-1 announcements about how to carry liquids, which would be useful perhaps *before* you clear security, but they broadcast it continuously through the entire airport.

I have a theory that, just like service in coach is poor by design to entice you into flying business class, airports (not all, but many) create an unpleasant atmosphere to entice you to get a lounge membership.

And even more

brad — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:13:53 -0700

They love to tell us our bags will be destroyed if left alone, and many other warnings. The question is, does this happen because they figure that we already are used to constant public address in the airport, so why not add some more? Or are they firmly convinced it is necessary for security? There are so few places we tolerate constant announcements, though some stores do them, and some train stations to. (The train stations could use the same system I describe.)

There is the issue of non-passengers and how to page them. This includes pages for lost children. In today’s cell phone world, it should be very rare to need a page for passengers to hook up with people who are there to meet them. (The one exception would be international arrivals who do not have a cell phone that works well, or at a fair price, in the target country.) Arriving passengers also will not have the pagers, though they might well have the cell phone number known to the airline.

Once again, we might call upon airports to negotiate with the cell companies to not charge for cell calls that take place within the airport (yes, even cell net to cell net, though that makes it harder) to eliminate this excuse. Or one could allow the “white courtesy phone” system to call for free any cell phone that is currently at the airport.

Of course, we could also just allow both arriving passengers and people meeting them to pick up the pagers, though in these cases we don’t have a fixed point they must return them, nor a simple way to tie the pager to the person, as we do with departing passengers.

One useful thing about a pager pickup point, however, is it’s a good place to display a sign with the airport rules about parking in the white zone or unattended baggage.

Because so many people want to try to read, sleep or get work done in an airport, this is a place we need the peace and quiet more than most.

Useless paging

Smitty — Mon, 25 May 2009 19:55:18 -0700

My favorite idiotic page is the one about parking. Do they really think someone in the gate area has parked in the white zone and is boarding a flight? And what about "exit express?" If I'm in the security line, am I really going to run back to my car to get my parking stub so I can pay for it before returning to my car? No, that ship has sailed.

Can airports do paging as well as a restaurant?

brad — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:10:32 -0700

I have a lot of peeves about airports, like almost everybody. One of them is the constant flow of public address announcements. They make it hard to read, work or concentrate for many people. Certainly it’s hard to sleep. It’s often even hard to have a phone call with the announcements in the background.

One solution to this is the premium airline lounges. These are announcement-free, but you must watch the screens regularly to track any changes. And of course they cost a lot of money, and may be far from your gate.

Some airlines have also improved things by putting up screens at the gates that list the status of standby passengers and people waiting for upgrades. This also saves them a lot of questions at the gate, which is good.

But it’s not enough. Yet, even in a cheap restaurant, they often have a solution. They give you a special pager programmed to summon you when your table or food is ready. It vibrates (never beeps) and they are designed to stack on top of one another for recharging.

Airports could do a lot better. Yes, they could hand you an electronic pager instead of/in addition to a boarding pass. This could be used to signal you anywhere in the airport. It could have an active RFID to allow you to walk though an automatic gate onto the plane with no need for even a gate agent, depositing the pager as you board.

Each pager could also know where it is in the airport. Thus a signal could go out about the start of boarding, and if your pager is not at the gate, it could tell the airline where you are. If you’re in the security line, it might tell you to show the pager to somebody who can get you through faster (though of course if you make this a regular thing that has other downsides.)