Dim lights inside a plane is a cue for passengers to take a nap.
For AirAsia X flight D7326 flying to Chengdu, China from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 21 July, it was the spark for a mid-flight rage.
Three women passengers who were loudly chatting were asked by a male passenger behind them to quiet down so he could rest, Channel News Asia (CNA) reports.
When the women ignored him and continued talking, the man told them to shut up.
A viral video of the incident, taken by another passenger, showed one of the women reaching over her seat and pulling the lanyard around the man’s neck as cabin attendants intervened to break them up.
The video showed the man grabbing the woman by the head and shoving her face down before her companion pulled her away.
In all, five passengers were involved and airport police later arrested three of them and fined two others, CNA reports.
Meanwhile, cabin noise is more tolerable than the pollution-level sounds in an airport. Humming escalators, rumbling baggage carousels, hurried footsteps, and speakers blaring boarding calls combined are quite straining to the ear.
Heathrow Airport, the United Kingdom’s biggest flight hub, is adding what it calls a new “mood matching” sound mix, which will be looped seamlessly and played throughout the airport’s terminals this summer, BBC reports.
Airport authorities hired Grammy nominee “musician, multi-instrumentalist and producer” Jordan Rakei to create the soundtrack titled “Music for Heathrow.”
Lee Boyle, terminals head of Heathrow, describes the soundtrack as capturing the feeling of excitement of setting foot at the airport, according to BBC.
“Music for Heathrow,” which also features sounds from famous movie scenes, “is the first ever soundtrack created entirely with the sounds of an airport” such as passports being stamped, planes taking off and landing, chatter, the ding of a lift, and the sound of a water fountain, according to BBC.