Ever noticed how weirdly people act in airports? I’ve seen overexcited lager drinkers at Stansted Spoons at 7am, in-transit New York bankers jogging around Frankfurt airport like it was Central Park and, last month, four passengers in hazmat suits at Changi in Singapore — one had a Hello Kitty backpack.
But they’re not the only ones displaying abnormal behaviour. It’s all of us. Collectively we step into an airport and turn into five-year-olds on the first day of big school. You’d think that we would all know how to behave by now — after all, it’s 75 years next month since Vladimir Raitz founded Horizon Holidays and chartered a DC-3 to fly 32 passengers to Corsica, not only inventing the package holiday but also beginning the democratisation of aviation.
That is plenty of time for society to have established an etiquette for air travel, and yet we still think we can sneak that litre of Bacardi through security; we are still blind to the notices about belts, keys and laptops and remain ever-confident that the gate staff won’t mind the three items of hand luggage we want to take on board (and are outraged when they do).
We get drunk in departure lounges, drunker still on planes, prop our trotters on the seat backs and allow our kids to binge-watch Peppa Pig on tablets without headphones. We leap to our feet when the aircraft lands, causing mass anxiety, and then we treat the travelators like an opportunity for a group chat, causing mass irritation.
E-gates present us with a special challenge. First, you have to stand on the big painted feet. Then you have to slide your passport into the slot the right way around. Next, you have to look at the camera. Not working? Try removing your sunglasses, neck pillow, headphones and bobble hat — just like the sign says — and have another go.
Finally, there’s the luggage carousel. We’re not averse to standing behind the yellow line on railway platforms, and yet in the baggage hall we crowd around the belt like thirsty cattle at a waterhole.
No nationality is better behaved than any other, and frequent flyers, who should know better, are often the worst. But why is it that airports have this effect on us?
Steve Taylor is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University. He compares airports to what the Irish refer to as áit caol — or thin places, where the boundaries between one world and another merge. In thin places we are neither here nor there, a kind of limbo between life as we know it and the paradise we hope awaits us — which sums up the airport experience perfectly.
The present becomes irrelevant and “everyone’s attention turns towards the future, to their flights and the adventures ahead of them when they arrive at their destination”, Taylor says. “This intense future focus often brings frustration, especially if flights are delayed.”
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Then there’s what the Safer Travel Foundation, a charity working to prevent harm to UK travellers, calls the “holiday head” syndrome, or the propensity to behave on holiday in ways you wouldn’t at home. Research shows we are more likely to drink too much on holiday or undertake risky activities such as quad biking, often not covered by travel insurance policies. Some of us are in greater danger of catching STIs, racking up huge credit card bills or falling from balconies.
For many the holiday head takes over the moment we clear security. The anticipation is gone, the anxiety is evaporating and the excitement is ramping up. It’s like the first day of the school holidays: we’re off the leash and, for the next two weeks, we can be whoever we want.
Taylor dubs this the “shift from our normal civilised ego to the primitive, instinctive part of the psyche, which Freud called the id”.
“The id is the site of our desires and drives, our emotions and aggression, and it demands instant gratification,” Taylor says. “Outside normal restraints, and once holidaymakers become intoxicated, the id may become completely dominant and liable to cause mayhem.”
Little has been done to mitigate our inappropriate behaviour in airports beyond a visible armed police presence. Airport executives need to find smarter ways to reduce the anxieties and unpleasantries that blight our experience of aviation.
Catapulting tired, irritated and fretful passengers from a stressful security queue into a crowded shopping centre with inadequate seating and grotty facilities might be good for the bottom line, but it isn’t going to help them achieve a zen state. The frustration is perhaps greater upon our return, when the airport has ceased to be a portal to our dreams and become a prison from which we must escape.
Confusing signs, a lack of clearly marked routes and an excessive amount of distractions raise blood pressure, reduce customer satisfaction and increase the risk of aggressive or antisocial behaviour. Did no one at Heathrow consider that lining the corridor walls with advertisements for banks or pictures of jolly Beefeaters might cause more frustration than inspiration? Count the number of times you swear under your breath next time you’re hiking through an airport. That’s cortisol talking, not serotonin.
We want more seating, more charging points and lots more space in which kids can let off steam. We need bigger, brighter, cleaner loos, more waste bins, colour-coded pathways and more intelligent design than just the standard shopping mall model. What we don’t need are any more Starbucks, Pret or duty-free outlets.
Perhaps they could introduce the airside equivalent of primary-school playground monitors or take up Ryanair’s long-standing suggestion of a two-drink limit per passenger, first mooted last August. These would help to keep the peace.
Supervised baggage carousels would be good too. Dubai, Johannesburg, Mumbai and some airports in the Caribbean are among those that already deploy staff in these areas. They pick off the business-class bags, assist the overloaded or those with additional needs with their luggage and enforce the rule about staying behind the line.
Would such changes be too expensive? Too detrimental to the retail business model? Perhaps not, because airports elsewhere manage to turn a profit while also inducing serenity. Changi, with its butterfly garden and spectacular waterfall, is often cited as the finest example (although I find it too large and too poorly signed). Narita airport in Tokyo has running-track-style lanes painted in blue and red to guide travellers to gates, with distance markers for reassurance. Vancouver and Helsinki use the sounds of nature to tranquillise travellers — the latter plays birdsong in the loos — and Doha in Qatar, Incheon in South Korea and Bangalore in India have impressive indoor forests.
The UK has no such soulfulness in its big airports, yet one of the most calming I’ve ever flown from is Wick John o’ Groats. It has no bars, bistros or designer shops, and hardly any passengers, but does have free wi-fi, a coffee machine and a glass cabinet containing locally distilled whisky that appears to be for sale (although whenever I’ve been there no one has had the key) . There’s nothing to do there but read the short history of the airfield and look out across the free car park to the North Sea. But if you can stay off your phone you’ll walk to your aircraft in a zoned-out state of bliss.
What changes do you think airports need to make to provide a smoother experience for passengers?
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