Last updated on November 26, 2023
LAX was a particularly difficult place to be during our return from a California trip. We had to spend six hours in LAX, waiting for a flight to San Francisco on our way back to Pittsburgh. Yes, we went Fresno, to Los Angeles, to San Francisco, to Pittsburgh after our more direct flight (arriving eight hours earlier in Pittsburgh) through Phoenix was cancelled.
I’m had sensory issues in many airports, so this is not an exclusively LAX problem. It is a problem with the “safety” features and generally poor design of airports.
First, there are too many overlapping announcements over speakers. Untangling which voices matter to you requires listening to these garbled announcements as they repeat. They need a better approach so you hear one voice at a time — and with better fidelity. I’m reminded of the scene in Robots at the train station: the garbled voice turns out to be the announcer’s actual voice.
Next, the signage could be better. A lot better. Thankfully, airline smartphone apps include maps of the airports, with labels for which airlines are in which terminals. At LAX, we landed in an external regional location, requiring us to walk down an old-school mobile staircase. I’m sure there’s a name for those. On the ground, we entered the terminal and then had to be directed to a bus stop that would take us the main terminals.
The crush of people trying to get to the correct busses and then to their terminals was overwhelming. A lot of people were navigating to changed gates, new flights, and other challenges. Overbooking is a standard practice, so they were offering people boarding the busses $500 vouchers to take other flights. This caused yet more confusion and delays.
Once off the bus, we had to navigate to two different wings of the main complex. Our flight moved from gate 73 to 83 to 74, and (of course) the 70s and 80s aren’t close to each other and there is no people mover or moving sidewalk inside the complex. Running about with two children added to my anxiety.
Everywhere you walk, horns and sirens sound. These are the small electric carts warning people to get out of the way. These carts are too loud — much louder than is necessary to attract attention. They also have light poles blinking away, in case you cannot hear the horrible sounds and fail to notice people leaping out of the path. There are far too many of these noisy carts running about LAX; we saw the same driver (carrying nobody and nothing) repeatedly during our time in LAX.
Door alarms at the gates are another safety feature that people ignore. They sound constantly, so the gate crews ignore the high-pitched, painful, alarms. One lasted at least four minutes. I know, because I had my hands over my ears and was checking my watch. The pain caused a headache and left my stomach churning.
Airports need to be designed with greater accessibility. There’s nothing accessible about the sensory overload in these complexes.
Anyone, not only an autistic person, would be on edge with all the sounds and commotion. Redesigning the pedestrian traffic, setting up lanes for carts, adding more internal transit options, and fixing the public address systems would be practical ways to improve most airports. I don’t want a quiet space for me — I want the airports to be better for everyone.
I did mange 12,000 steps at LAX, running about from gate to gate and trying to obtain new boarding passes for a changed flight. At least I burned some calories — but not enough to justify the $69 lunch for three people.