Dear people who work at the airport

致机场工作人员

Dear people who work at the airport 12 Aug, 2026 I would like you to know that we passengers are trying our best. To you, this place makes sense — you come here every day. You speak the lingo. You know what is meant by a gate and a concourse, and the difference between a ticket and a boarding pass.

致机场工作人员（2026年8月12日）：我想让你们知道，我们乘客已经在尽力了。对你们来说，这个地方再熟悉不过——你们每天都来这里。你们说着这里的“行话”。你们知道登机口和候机大厅是什么意思，也分得清机票和登机牌的区别。

The poor elderly Indian woman who you just told to “keep the gate area clear” does not, and she wasn’t trying to make your life more difficult. It’s just that she has never flown before, she’s trying to keep track of where all her grandchildren are, and when you loudly yet mumblingly announced that “We would now like to invite our Elite SkyFlyer Gold Members to commence boarding”, English being her fourth language, all she really heard was “hurble flurble durble BOARDING”, and she naturally thought it might be time to board.

刚才那位被你们要求“保持登机口区域畅通”的可怜印度老妇人，她并不懂这些，她也并非有意要给你们添麻烦。只是她从未坐过飞机，她正忙着照看身边的孙辈们。当你们大声却含糊不清地宣布“现在邀请我们的精英SkyFlyer金卡会员开始登机”时，由于英语是她的第四语言，她听到的只有“呜哩哇啦……登机”，于是她自然而然地以为轮到她登机了。

She was anxious, because you instilled a sense of panic in her. There is the constant suggestion that if we put one foot wrong, you will publicly shame and humiliate us, like the time you laughed at all the people who volunteered to check in our cabin bags like you asked us to. We were trying to do the right thing, and we weren’t to know that the bags we were planning to take with us in the cabin were not “cabin bags” as you understand them.

她感到焦虑，因为你们让她产生了恐慌感。你们总是暗示，如果我们走错一步，就会遭到你们的公开羞辱，就像上次你们嘲笑那些按照要求主动托运随身行李的乘客一样。我们当时只是想配合工作，我们哪知道我们打算带上飞机的包，在你们眼里竟然不算“随身行李”。

You give us contradictory instructions in different mediums; the monitors that you spent so much money to install show the inscrutable phrase NOW BOARDING — REMAIN SEATED. You do everything you can to discourage us from getting on the airplane in the wrong order, but as soon as our boarding group is finally called, you immediately switch the screens to read GATE CLOSING in red flashing type.

你们通过不同渠道发布相互矛盾的指令；你们花重金安装的显示屏上写着令人费解的“正在登机——请保持就座”。你们竭尽全力阻止我们不按顺序登机，但当终于轮到我们的登机组时，你们又立刻将屏幕切换成闪烁的红色字体“登机口即将关闭”。

It is not our fault that someone designed this hellscape like a giant mall intersected at right angles with a concrete dungeon. One minute, smiling salespeople are spraying expensive perfume in your face and trying to sell you a handbag that costs more than a year’s salary. The next, po-faced military-looking types are barking commands at you. Take your laptop out! Put it back in your bag! Wait your turn, don’t try to jump the queue! Don’t just stand there, you’re holding everyone up!

有人把这个地狱般的地方设计成一个巨大的购物中心，并与混凝土构成的地牢呈直角交叉，这可不是我们的错。前一分钟，面带微笑的销售员还在往你脸上喷昂贵的香水，试图向你推销一个抵得上一年工资的手提包。后一分钟，那些面无表情、长得像军人一样的人就开始对你大吼大叫：把笔记本电脑拿出来！放回包里！排好队，别想插队！别站在那儿，你挡住大家的路了！

At Heathrow, you tell us to go to the B gates, but there is no sign for that; there is only a sign for gate B32 to B48. Should I follow those? What if there is a gate B31 that I should be heading to, but there is a “security check”, meaning that a member of staff vaguely wanders about the little train that you weirdly insist on calling a “transit”? Clearly it can’t be anything serious because it happens so often that you’ve gone to the trouble of preparing a little animation to be shown on the screens, but it does seem to take a while, and if I go the wrong way now I may not make it back in time.

在希思罗机场，你们告诉我们去B登机口，但那里根本没有指示牌；只有指向B32到B48登机口的牌子。我该跟着走吗？如果我该去的是B31登机口怎么办？而且那里还有个“安检”，意味着一名工作人员在你们奇怪地坚持称为“中转车”的小火车旁漫无目的地晃悠。显然这没什么大不了的，因为这种情况太常见了，以至于你们还特意制作了动画在屏幕上播放，但这确实很花时间，如果我现在走错了路，可能就赶不回来了。

When we try to find gate B45, we encounter the following sign: Upon seeing this, the experienced visitor to this sceptred isle knows to smartly turn on their heel because B45 is right behind them, but we occasional travellers don’t. I expected that after a few dozen mostly intercontinental flights I would be better at this, but hundreds of thousands of miles later I still only have the vaguest idea of what a transfer desk is for.

当我们试图寻找B45登机口时，我们看到了这样的指示牌：看到这个，在这片神圣土地上经验丰富的游客会聪明地转过身，因为B45就在他们身后，但我们这些偶尔旅行的人却不知道。我本以为在经历了几十次洲际飞行后，我会更擅长这些，但飞行了数十万英里之后，我对中转柜台到底是干什么用的依然只有模糊的概念。

If you are currently designing an airport and you have a little niggling doubt at the back of your head that you haven’t quite done all you could do to optimise the passenger experience, feel free to give me a call. I would be delighted to offer a free consultation to look at things from the point of view of an exhausted, anxious person out of their element, like a sort of Temple Grandin of the terminal.

如果你目前正在设计一座机场，并且心里隐隐觉得在优化乘客体验方面做得还不够，欢迎随时给我打电话。我很乐意提供免费咨询，从一个精疲力竭、焦虑不安且不知所措的乘客视角来看待这些问题，就像航站楼里的“坦普尔·葛兰汀”（Temple Grandin）一样。