gnuuhhh

[rone]

Bangalore International Airport fucking sucks.  It's an execrable, typically Third World experience.  Not even Quito's airport at its worst, during construction, was as bad as this.  Only two X-ray machines for everyone, and the metal detectors were so sensitive that i think they were just motion sensors, so the security people ended up waving a wand at every single passenger.  And the "line" to board was a crush of people shifting about, trying to jockey for position — almost identical to the way people drive in Bangalore, and a few people were in the wrong line and almost missed their flight to Bangkok; while some of the blame goes to them for being clueless tourists, the staff's announcements were made by Charlie Brown's parents.

Bangalore is the IT capital of India, so it stands to reason that it's been shuttling a lot more people over at least the last 5 years.  Why hasn't the airport been improved?  Infrastructure is dismal throughout the city, but you'd think the one part that handles the foreigners would be the one that gets attention, for many reasons.  I'm glad i took Gowda's advice to show up 3 hours early, especially because traffic was quite bad (afternoon rush hour, doncha know).

Comments

[badblood44.livejournal.com]

You're scaring me. I am probably not going to be able to avoid a trip to Bangalore. I'll have to go most likely in the next 3-6 months.

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

Aquino Airport in Manila has two terminals--the new terminal is quite nice, and you can get through nice and quickly, especially if you inadvertently bribe the security guard with a few hundred yen that you just happen to have in your pocket change. ("Ooh, Japanese yen! Mind if I take some of these coins as a souvenir?" "Sure, help yourself." "Okay, go right on through!" Oops, I just bribed him, didn't I?)

The old terminal, though, is very, very third world, though, complete with gruff guards with MACHINE GUNS all over the place, thousands of people going in all directions at once, and long Soviet-style lineups for everything. And if you get there only three hours early, you might clear the three different levels of security check, complete with X-ray machines and manual bag searches, by last call.

Oh yeah, and Manila drivers are nuts too. Everyone has cool cell phones though!

[(Anonymous)]

Well we're getting a new airport soon hehe. As a patriotic Indian I must stand up for my country ;)

[captain-nesky.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're coming home; it was making me anxious to here how you were getting swindled..........maybe I should have said anything :-)

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

Poor airport infrastructure isn't confined to the Third World by any means. I can think of a number of first-world airports that are almost as bad as what you've described. London Gatwick and Charles DeGaulle in Paris come to mind.

Gatwick, in particular, is generally an awful experience. I always have to get there at least 3-4 hours early to ensure that I catch my flight, and they're forever changing gates on flights without telling anyone, thus neccessitating a frantic stampede to a different terminal at the last possible minute. I can't imagine how bad it must've gotten after the BAA declared War On Hair Gel.

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Gatwick sucks big ones. CDG has never really recovered from that building collapse: they are still using shuttle buses to compensate. I have to confess that I was going to cite my experiences of O' Hare, but that probably owed more to the airline in question than the design of the airport . . .

It has to be said that some of the BAA security measures look like a case of making a show of security while actually increasing (or at least protecting) revenues for BAA. For example, airport staff who work within the "secured area" can't bring water or other soft drinks with them to work, but they can buy them within the airport, at airport prices.

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

One of my cow-orkers passed through that terminal at CDG about 10 minutes before it collapsed.

O'Hare's problem is that it's *huge*. You always have to allow a minimum of 30-45 minutes to get between gates when trying to make a connection.