Airports

Have been through quite some airports in the past few months and thought would post my observations about these airports. Well let's start with our very own Bangalore Airport.

Bangalore Airport:

First of all this is not an airport at all ;-(. It is an HAL airbase which is being used as a stop gap solution till the International Airport comes up at Devanahalli. With the terrific growth of IT in bangalore, this airport is crumbling under pressure to handle the huge traffic. If you think I am talking about the huge traffic jams and parking problems in Airport raod and the airport entrance, that is not the only problem. Do you know that even aircraft pilots are cribbing about no parking available for their planes!!! Confused, well this happens almost daily at the Bangalore airport. Lufthansa and AirFrance flights depart within half an hour gap and the airport has only one international terminal gate. So the AirFrance flight has to wait till the Luftansa departs to get the parking spot. Its funny to see the bewildered looks on the passenger's faces when the announcement comes that the AirFrance flight is delayed due to non availability of parking space!!!! Leaves people wondering if that was a Just for Gags trick :-)

But should say there are quite some visible improvements in the international terminal like the new deep blue AirFrance counter, streamlining of the emigration and customs counters. With the number of flights increasing everyday, the authorities are struggling to manage with the limited resources and hopefully the new airport will get ready on time to take the load off the HAL airport.

Chennai Airport:

Haven't been through the international terminal at Chennai but had been at the national Kamaraj terminal a couple of times. Pretty huge and organized compared to its Bangalore counterpart. The time that I was there, there were a line of Kingfisher airlines flights departing around that time and Mallya's ladies in their bright red minis were adding a lot of glamour to the airport. Ya you guessed it, I rate the Chennai airport as the best airport in the world :-). Should say that Mallya's style of calling passengers as "guests" is really unique. Truly stands by his quote that "We are not in aviation business but in hospitality business".

The national terminal has 5 gates and is kept pretty busy with flights continously landing and taking off. Also noticed that almost every flight was leaving "on time", something very uncommon in India. But at the current rate of growth of Indian aviation industry, the airport could soon become a bottleneck. Would you believe it, a small town San Antonio in US (comparable with Salem) had 15 gates in a single terminal in its national airport. Hope the airport authorities realize it and proactively take steps to expand the airport facilities.

Have been away from active blogging for quite some time. Didn't want to start off again with a small post saying "Will try to start posting actively" and get into hibernation mode again. So have started off with a proper post and look out for the next post on other international airports in the world that I have been through sooooon....

Cheers,
Agent Pal