HYDERABAD: A week after the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport commenced commercial operations, GMR officials say that many of the airport systems are stabilizing but passengers using the new facility beg to differ.
Though GMR officials say the problems being faced at the new 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.
"I dropped my bag on the escalator and carried my suitcase," he says, but it was lugging his bag and suitcase "under the scorching sun" on the muddy track to the car that left him fuming. "The pathway was incomplete. I don't think they should have started it (the airport) unless it was completely ready," he says.
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.
"We didn't know what to do. There wasn't a single attendant to help us out. Though we shouted for help, no one could hear us as the bridge is made of glass panels," Rao narrated to media.
The new airport, built with Rs 2,500 crore in about 5,500 acres, has about 12 aerobridges.
According to Rao, the facilities at the incomplete airport are far from offering quality service to passengers.
"Nothing is ready to make the airport operational. Going by our experience on the aerobridge, the airport developer seems to have not done even some of the basic tests on the equipment deployed," Rao alleged.
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.
"When my Indian Airlines flight was announced, we were asked to proceed to gate 25 C but once we reached the gate we were told that it wasn't IA but a Jet flight that was going from there," he says, adding that meanwhile he was shown six buckets near gate no. 25 C that were collecting water that was "dripping from everywhere".
At the time when he was told that his flight still had to leave, the TV monitors announcing arrivals and departures showed "Gates Closed" even when boarding had not started, which led to confusion that the flight had taken off.
The absence of an executive lounge has irked Bhargava and even Keshava Rao. Rao along with Justice Sudarshan Reddy and T Subbarami Reddy (Union minister) couldn't find any lounge where they could wait for their delayed flights.
"We were taken to a place with two tables and two chairs. One of the employees told us that a VIP lounge was being created. Since we could not manage with those chairs and tables, we had no option but to hang around in the corridor,"he says.
However, a GMR official said these are teething problems. They cite examples of airports such as the Hong Kong International Airport that too faced "organisational, mechanical and technical" problems.
They also quickly narrate the incident involving the recently opened Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport wherein the in-line baggage system failed hours after the airport opened and claim that 70 flights had to be cancelled within the first two days.
GMR officials also cite the Suvarnabhumi International Airport at Bangkok when it comes to departure boards displaying wrong information and failures in check-in system during its initial days after opening.
