One aspect of international flying which often throws Australians is the lack of airport-wide boarding announcements. There’s no easy way to deal with this other than being alert to the current time, but the ‘Now Boarding’ sign I encountered in the Delta lounge at Los Angeles does make the task a little easier.
Every Australian domestic airport announces boarding for flights over a loudspeaker through the entire airport (not just at the gate itself), but this rarely happens at overseas airports, especially in the US. It’s a question of volume: at larger airports there are so many flights that if announcements were made for each one, the cacophony would be non-stop and people would tune out anyway. So you need to rely on checking the flight indicator boards, which in itself can be a nuisance when they run over four or more screens and list flights alphabetically by destination rather than departure time.
As such, I was impressed with the list of ‘now boarding’ flights in the Delta lounge, displayed just above the food area, making it easy to see if your own flight was boarding. The lounge also has a full list of all flights, but for speedy reference this was handy. If you’re not lucky enough to be headed into a lounge, waiting at your designated gate help avoid any nasty surprises, but this is an small innovation I’d be happy to see elsewhere.
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