Passengers at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City will from next month have to keep track of their flight information, save for boarding gate changes, by themselves as they will no longer receive reminders via the loudspeaker system there.

Tan Son Nhat will stop making announcements such as final calls for boarding and flight status changes, as well as paging specific passengers who are about to miss their flights, over the public address system, according to the airport management.

The only announcement to be made via the loudspeaker system is gate changes.

The change will take effect from July 1 at its international terminal, and October 1 at the domestic one.

Passengers will have to watch the clock so as not to miss their flights, or pay attention to electronic display boards that show all flight information, including delays and cancelations, at the airport.

The move is meant to make Tan Son Nhat a more pleasant and quiet airport and to ensure passengers will not miss such important announcements as gate changes once it is the only information to be delivered via the loudspeakers.

Noise pollution caused by repeated loudspeaker announcements has become an issue at Tan Son Nhat, which is serving some 38 million passengers a year despite a designed capacity of only 25 million passengers.

However, many have expressed concerns that the move would only result in a larger number of passengers missing their flights as few may pay attention to the flight information displays.

While ‘going silent’ is a trend recently adopted by many major international airports, Vietnam should not immediately jump on this bandwagon, an aviation expert told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

Stop making all announcements via loudspeakers at once will be an abrupt change bound to shock passengers, he said.

“I think the airport should first install more information screens and assign more attendants to assist passengers, so they have time to train themselves to rely less on announcements made over the public address system,” he said.

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