A Frequent Flyer’s Guide to ASMR

Two hours into a red-eye flight from Singapore to Sydney, I’m about to lose it. My 6-foot-3 frame is crammed into a seat barely big enough for a toddler. To my right, a pensioner is snoring like a buzz saw, releasing pungent plumes of a half-digested tuna fish sandwich. It brings to mind the famous quote from the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre: Hell is other people. Only I’m quite sure Sartre never had to endure the middle seat in economy.

Deeply exhausted and slightly nauseous, I reach for a YouTube video I’ve watched countless times, and switch from tuning out to tuning in.

“Hi there,” it begins. “I’m Doctor Webber, and I’ll be doing your eye test today.”

For the next 10 minutes — and then longer, as I play it on repeat — a soothing female voice leads me through an ophthalmology exam, speaking at just above a whisper. Waves of goosebumps move across my body as she inquires about my family history of glaucoma and commands me to “follow the light with your eye” — though her precise words are beside the point. Once again, my sanity had been saved by ASMR.

I’m not alone in turning to the calming, repetitive blandness of ASMR to endure the misery of modern flight. About one in five travelers say they rely on audiovisual content that’s designed to generate an autonomous sensory meridian response — a sort of low-grade euphoria known as “tingles” — to cope with overbooked flights, unruly travelers, lost luggage, and absurdly cramped seating. My own video of choice has half a million views, and YouTube offerings that mix ASMR with the friendly sounds of air travel — the gently whirring engines, the soothing voice from the cockpit — register in the millions.

In the past few years, the airlines have started getting in on the action. JetBlue released AirSMR, a nine-minute audio experience that captures what the narrator introduces as “the calming sounds of the airport,” like rolling suitcases and a beverage being slurped through a straw. Delta, noting the popularity of the ASMR trend among its millennial and Gen Z passengers, released a 13-hour video on TikTok, to commemorate the debut of its direct flight from Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand. Your carrier might not be able to get you to your destination on time, but they’re happy to offer you some ASMR peanuts while you’re stuck on the runway.

“I’ve been chasing ambient noise similar to that of being in the air,” one YouTube commenter gushed. “This is heaven on earth to me.”

Some of the most elaborate videos are those offered on the Whispering Wings ASMR channel on YouTube. The videos, some of which are 11 hours long, are designed to mirror actual flight paths from the point of view of a passenger and feature audio and hyperrealistic cabin visuals captured from online flight simulators. Whispering Wings even records its own pilot announcements, and pairs them with real-life communications from air traffic control. The goal is to help travelers focus on the sounds of flying that might be considered more calming, without all the crying babies and irate passengers. “I’ve never felt this at peace on a plane before,” a commenter wrote about one Whispering Wings video, which follows an eight-hour trip from Toronto to Frankfurt, Germany.

Still, for all of ASMR’s popularity among frequent flyers, the weirdness factor has kept it from going fully mainstream. “I find it’s still kept quite hush-hush,” says Sasha Mukerjea, an events marketer and frequent traveler who uses ASMR to relax her nerves. “Some people find the phenomena baffling.”

I’ve been experiencing ASMR “tingles” since I was a kid. My family moved frequently before finally settling in Singapore, and I used to seek out sources of white noise as a way to relax. Once ASMR videos became available, I started consuming them like aspirin.

The specific ASMR “triggers” we respond to are as personal as our taste in food. Tuning into a certain sound — someone chomping into a pickle, say — may gross one person out while causing waves of pleasant chills in others. But while the term ASMR is relatively new, researchers say the response itself is as old as time. When we respond to soothing sounds, our brains are flooded with dopamine and oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, creating a feeling of euphoria that’s been referred to as “braingasms.”

“ASMR can be very helpful to decrease the stress of traveling,” says Craig Richard, a professor of biopharmaceutical sciences at Shenandoah University who partnered with JetBlue on the airline’s ASMR content. Still, he says, more study is needed to better understand what content works best on flights, since the increased pressure from high altitudes on the inner ear can dampen the body’s receptiveness to ASMR.

ASMR videos aren’t the only way to use the sounds of air travel to make the experience of air travel less stressful. I’ve found that tuning into even the most fleeting triggers, like the ding of the “fasten seatbelts” sign, can help induce a state of relaxation, helping to lower my heart rate and provide me with a sense of calm. As Richard explains it, these short sounds, if tied to warm memories, may trigger a kind of Pavlovian response that can stimulate ASMR by “reminding someone of pleasant travel experiences.”

“Instead of getting lost in the chaos, I leaned into the rhythmic undercurrent,” one ASMR devotee says.

I remember trying this DIY version of ASMR during a flight to London. It was my first trip to Europe since the pandemic, and the indignity of modern travel seemed like a small price to pay for a vacation I’d been craving. For the first few hours of the flight, everything was hunky-dory. Then, three rows ahead of me, a baby started wailing. My iPhone was out of juice, so I couldn’t reach for my tried-and-true ASMR video. I tried to drown out the noise by cranking up the volume on “Casino Royale,” the in-flight movie I was watching. But not even 007, with his license to kill, could silence the ceaseless cries.

Then I noticed that the two passengers to my right were speaking slowly and softly in a language I couldn’t make out. By focusing on their voices, I was able to restore my calm.

Mukerjea, the events marketer who relies on ASMR to travel, recalls a similar experience. When bad weather extended her layover in Delhi, at one of the world’s busiest airports, she found herself overwhelmed by “the blistering fluorescence and relentless tide of people.” So she began zeroing in on sounds that felt more calming. “Instead of getting lost in the chaos, I leaned into the rhythmic undercurrent,” she recalls. As she listened to “the murmur of voices, the soft rolling of suitcases over tiled floors,” the stress of yet another travel nightmare left her body.

Once in the air, Mukerjea favors what the ASMR community calls “unintentional” videos — those not specifically tagged as ASMR. “I avoid overly refined ASMR videos and prefer something more real: walking tours through quiet villages, the crunch of gravel underfoot, and sounds of the wind rustling through a harvest field,” Mukerjea says. “These natural sounds pull me beyond the cabin, making my journey feel less confined.”

Like every quirky subculture, ASMR airheads revel in meeting a fellow traveler. “Every time someone finds out about ASMR and comments on one of my videos, there is a sense of intense relief and happiness to finally find fellow people that ‘get it,'” says Ilse Blansert, whose YouTube channel boasts millions of views. “It really feels like it unites us and makes us closer, because we had this incredibly human experience in common.”

My own embrace of ASMR has improved not only my flights but also the rest of my vacations. My ability to identify triggers in the wild, and then to dial into them as a way to reduce my stress, is something I often lean on as I explore new places and experiences. It’s also made me a better travel companion to my wife, who’s much more easygoing than I am.

In 2023, our honeymoon in Japan coincided with a ferocious heat wave. Pounded by hundred-degree temperatures, we bravely — some would say stupidly — decided to take a three-hour midday walk in Kyoto’s Arashiyama Bamboo Forest. Airless and humid, the heat was even worse in the park than in the city. I found myself bathed in green light and heavy sweat as the sun knifed through the leaves, wishing I could be anyplace cooler.

I was starving, cranky, and seconds from snapping at my new bride — not a great start to the honeymoon. Then, out of desperation, I turned to ASMR. I stopped listening to my heavy, annoyed breathing and zeroed in on the wall of sound that I’d been ignoring for hours: the steady chorus of the cicada. Almost like magic, I was hit by a wave of goosebumps — and gratitude for the music of the moment. I came to a standstill and just listened, appreciating for the first time the bamboo forest that towered 65 feet above our heads.

“Why have you stopped, hon?” my wife asked. “Tired?”

“No,” I said. “Just tingling.”

Daniel Seifert is a freelance writer. He lives in Singapore.