New airport woes: They happen elsewhere too

Hyderabad/Bangalore: If anyone presumed that newbie airports only in India send the shivers up the back of air travellers, perish the thought.
Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International that opened in March and Bengaluru that is barely a week into business can take heart that they are in elite company, especially from Asia. The Web is full of scary tales of how air passengers were let down across many new airports, across their many ground functions.
British Airways’ T5 ‘terminal illness’ at Heathrow is only too new: T5 which opened at Heathrow in March failed in baggage handling, caused thousands of luggage pieces to pile up and forced over 250 flight cancellations in the early days. There is no clear update on whether T5 has recovered from the nightmare. If that was in London, lesser Asian greenfields that have sprung up in recent years also fell far short of perfection in the early days. Today, frequent fliers rave about how cool it is to go through these very airports: Hong Kong, Incheon in South Korea; Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi.
30/05/08 K.V. Kurmanath/Madhumathi D.S./Business Line

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Categories: Airports May 2008, New May 2008