This could likely lead to the extension of another trend: airlines’ apps for personal devices already overlap with the signage at the terminals and gates, and those same types of apps could interact with digital signage and wayfinding to steer travelers through an airport’s retail and restaurant thicket.
Freeman notes that Google has been mapping airports and train terminals, setting the stage for just that type of interactivity. “That kind of mapping could also extend to digital signage on the operations side; here our employees could track bags through the airport, on screens,” he suggests.
Peerless’ McClimans points out that pilots are already looking at digital signage as they pull their planes up to the gate.
Setting the Stage
Besides restaurants and retail, an increasing number of airports are accommodating the broader trend toward live entertainment. Jet Blue has run a series of live concerts, dubbed “Live From T5,” from its terminal at JFK, which has featured shows by Taylor Swift, Ellie Goulding, Lady Antebellum, Sarah McLachlan and Daughtry.
Two airports in particular — Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) in Texas and Nashville International in Tennessee (BNA) — have multiple stages with sound and lights that some of the bars and clubs on their respective music thoroughfares, Sixth Street and Lower Broadway, might envy.
In fact, AUS has a total of six music venues, the largest being the main terminal’s Asleep at the Wheel Stage at the Ray Benson Roadhouse restaurant.
That venue, which usually hosts a two-hour music performance five days a week and more during special events like SXSW or Formula 1 races, has two Mackie DLM12 12-inch powered loudspeakers (full-range to eliminate the need for subwoofers) along with four additional DLM12s for stage monitoring. Audio is mixed through a Mackie DL1608 16-channel digital mixer with iPad control.
Other stages use a combination of small Yamaha mixers and Yamaha and JBL speakers. Controlling sound in an acoustical environment like an airport concourse is a major challenge; in particular music has to avoid overpowering the airport’s paging system, says Michael Pennock, who oversees the music and audio at AUS.
“On either side of the Ray Benson Roadhouse there are two Southwest airline gates,” says Pennock. “With the [mixer’s] wireless remote iPad control, we can actually walk over to the gates while the band is playing, check volume levels with the airline personnel, and adjust from the iPad on the spot if needed.”
Airports are intrinsically acoustically challenged environments, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, marble or concrete floors and tiled walls. Pennock says that moving the main stage’s PA speakers down to the floor level helped minimize reflections.
Furthermore, a large renovation of the airport scheduled to take place over the next several years and include new audio and video paging systems, will offer an opportunity to add some acoustical treatments and possibly implement PA elements that incorporate beam-steering technology that will more precisely cover specific listening areas and keep sound off of reflective surfaces.
Increasing the number of mixer channels available for stage monitors has also helped keep the overall volume down, avoiding what Pennock called “volume wars” on stage as musicians tried to hear themselves. LED lighting, to replace the six Par-56 lights on the main stage’s truss now, are also on the agenda for the renovation, which Pennock says will also help AUS’ sustainability efforts. AV integrators can take note that representatives from other airports are coming by to see what AUS has been doing with live music.
“I’m doing tours pretty regularly for [other airport managers] now,” he says, noting that representatives from Denver International Airport were scheduled to look at his stages that very week. “Live music’s a big thing everywhere these days.”
Despite dozens of retail and restaurant options cropping up in airports today, they remain destinations only nominally — still places that need to be gotten through rather than gotten to. But for the time that people do spend in them (and that’s more than ever, as the percentage of flights delayed or cancelled by the big three airlines increased 88 percent between 2014 and 2012), they’re a captive audience that can expect a lot of audio and video helping them spend that time and, potentially, more money.
