DENVER — With the holiday season taking off, Denver International Airport's 'Quiet Airport Policy' is being put to the test.
The airport launched the initiative in July, cutting announcement frequency by nearly 70% to create a more peaceful travel experience for passengers navigating the busy terminals.
The airport has reprogrammed 200 microphone stations to limit their reach in the concourses, a change that cost around $40,000, according to Dave Matos, director of maintenance administration at DIA. Previously, gate agents could make announcements spanning 70 gates.
"We reprogrammed it so that they can just only do their gate and the two adjacent gates, and that's it," said Matos.
While Thanksgiving Day itself saw lighter crowds, travelers told Denver7 the holiday travel season can bring its own stressors.
"I would say the lines, being we tend to run a little late," laughed traveler Cindy Loehr, when asked what stresses her out the most this season.
Among the changes to protect your peace, Matos told Denver7 the airport has also installed noise sensors in loud speakers and is instructing airlines to find alternatives to concourse-wide broadcasts.
"It's really more of reducing the redundancy in announcements, from gate calls to limiting the paging that goes on in the terminal to just the essential stuff," Matos explained.
But airport officials don't expect the reduced announcements to cause passengers to miss flights, as Matos said most travelers receive notifications through other channels.
"Almost every airline has an app that you can get your gate changes and updates and stuff like that," he said.
Though certain announcements will remain unchanged, including TSA warnings about unattended bags, which federal law requires airports to broadcast at least once every 30 minutes.
Matos said DIA is doing what it can during the unpredictable holiday travel season, and more changes could be coming.
His team plans to install signage alerting passengers of the new noise policy and reminding them to use headphones and take other common courtesies.
"We'll keep looking at it and monitoring and see what else we can do to make it more pleasant at DEN," Matos said.
