Atlantica - 01.06.2006, Page 23

22 AT L A N T I CA
on the fly
ATMOSPHERE IN THE STRATOSPHERE
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Who chose that cabin music?
By D.Heimpel.
Five years ago, I took a flight from Cuzco, Peru, to Lima. I thought
that flying would be a luxury and a huge advantage over the
rickety-tickety busses that struggle through Andean passes.
But as the plane lurched over the mountains, the sounds of a
Peruvian panpipe filled the cabin, making it feel more like an
oversized collectivo than a high-tech aircraft.
Granted, we were in Peru, and I had heard that same panpipe
in shacks where they were serving Alpaca femur stew, or on the
Camino del Inca on the way up to Machu Picchu. As the plane
hovered in the thin air, I couldn’t help feeling that the rustic
music was out of place. Undoubtedly, some airline employee
in Lima or Cuzco had thought that the windy toots would be
soothing to white-knuckled passengers bumping over snow-
capped peaks.
What you hear when you walk onto a plane is the beginning
of your experience as a passenger. It’s also the last thing you hear
when you leave. It is an airline’s chance to touch the passenger,
make ‘em feel good, leave them with a good memory. And while
there is a whole industry devoted to the songs pumped from
your armrest, the beats filling the cabin are almost always the
whim of a flight entertainment manager with little regard for
all the research put into airlines’ other music and science for
that matter.
Delta filed for bankruptcy but still found enough change in
the business class seats to upgrade their in-flight entertainment
system to include more than 1,600 songs. Kingfisher Airlines saw
the value in good vibrations and has led the charge as the first
domestic carrier in India to offer in-flight music. Virtually every
airline outsources its musical selection to companies specialized
in in-flight entertainment. With all that time and money spent
on making the music you plug into perfect, what’s up with the
tunes you can’t turn off?
“The best boarding music is boarding music you don’t
hear,” says Damian Fannin, CEO of Inflight Dublin, a behemoth
company providing music, movies, and video games to 60
airlines. “Some flight managers try to get sexy with it. But then
you have this jazzed up music on a 6 am flight when nobody
wants to hear it.”
Science says that in those groggy mornings, airlines could
take an opportunity to chill out passengers via piped-in tunes.
Throughout history there has always been a belief that the
right music can soothe. Music was thought to heal in ancient
Greece, and Aristotle thought that sweet melodies could stymie
insanity.
Modern psychology and physiology agree. Music that
mimics a resting heart rate of 60 to 70 beats per minute has
proven to be relaxing. It’s also been shown that playing music
to seniors with dementia decreases agitated behavior. And
a wide range of studies have shown that soothing music
is associated with a decrease in blood pressure as well as a
reduction in cortisol and noradrenaline. Cortisol increases
blood pressure and noradarenaline increases muscle readiness
and releases energy from fat as part of the human self-defense
mechanism.
Airlines have picked up on this, stacking their onboard
computers with pre-selected music meant to relax their
passengers.
Virgin Atlantic outsources its in-flight music to Somethin’
Else, England’s largest independent radio production company.
Virgin is equipped with AVOD (audio video on demand) systems
with over 100 CDs, talking books and relaxation programs. The
idea is that listeners can choose what they want when they
want, and are saved the endless loop of channels that change
as infrequently as once a year for some airlines.
But even on a huge airline like Virgin, what you hear when
you’re heaving your suitcase into the overhead bin is almost
invariably the choice of someone in the airlines’ customer
relations department.
“The music is dependent on the person putting together
the list,” says Katie Marks, Virgin’s Onboard Media Coordinator,
of the 13 boarding tracks the airline changes every month. “You
can tell who made the choices.”
Other airlines also use subjectivity as their cabin-music
muse.
Although only 20 percent of Icelandair’s passengers are
Icelandic, Anna Margarét Jónsdóttir, Icelandair’s onboard music
selector, chose Icelandic jazz group Flís for taxi and takeoff. “I
wanted something that offended nobody,” she says.
Virgin’s Katie Marks agrees that cabin music has to be chilled
out. But according to a recent Virgin playlist, I could still end up
listening to the fast tempo of indie rockers Bloc Party, or Will
Smith’s catchy “Summertime.”
So if you’d rather hear nothing at all, earplugs are always
an option. a
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