New airport disappoints commuters

Hyderabad: Though GMR officials say the problems being faced at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport are similar to the ones faced in any other newly-opened international airports, but passengers point out that nothing can possibly explain why an "incomplete" airport was opened to commercial operations.
On Friday afternoon, Sukhendu Chakrabarti, COO with Gulf Oil Corporation took 45 minutes to reach his car after coming out of the airport arrival. With his car and driver stationed at the parking area, Chakrabarti found no directions or arrows to lead him to the parking area.
The ramp leading to the parking lot was closed and there was no one to guide. He found the elevator packed and chose the escalator to go down.
On Thursday, a group of senior Congress party members ran into rough weather at the airport. K Keshava Rao, Rajya Sabha MP landed at the new airport on at 8 am from Delhi by a Jet flight along with some party members.
Just when they walked out of the aircraft and entered the aerobridge, the main doors of the bridge suddenly closed trapping those inside it.
But what former vice-chairman of the National Knowledge Commission P M Bhargava went through on Friday night makes for a compulsive page-turner. From being rushed to remove his bags from his car when he reached the airport to finding no executive class lounge space, Bhargava shares a litany of incidents, the most glaring being the absence of proper flight announcements.
The absence of an executive lounge has irked Bhargava and even Keshava Rao.
However, a GMR official said these are teething problems.
30/03/08 Times of India

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Categories: Airports Mar 2008, New Mar 2008