Sunday, June 29, 2008

Update on BIAL

I had an earlier post on BIAL and had noted how somehow the airport had not lived upto the expectations of many. Now that I have made a few more trips, I am beginning to see the airport come into its own... I read somewhere them claiming that a passenger will alight and be out in 20 mins... i actually timed it yesterday and i was out in 12... it helped that we used the aerobridge and and being a platinum on Jet my luggage gets priority, but yes it was impressive... in 20 Min's I was out of the airport, into a taxi and halfway to the trumpet changeover....

The toilets issue still remains, not sure what they can do about it, the check in counters is a mystery to me.... They seem to have ~65 (or was it ~50) counters, but I end up spending more time in a queue than the old airport, not sure what is happening here.... Traditional queuing theory suggests that single queues with multiple counters are more effective than multiple queues, and that has been put into practice here, but still it doesn't seem to work.... hmm I need to look at this tomorrow when I travel again..

The seating area is woefully short I think, we Indians are not too used to forming a single file line , usually 2 lines get formed, and close to the boarding counters, there is a vague formation of chairs obstructing the line formation...... somewhere I think the commercial area to seating area is sub optimal.... The number of options to eat is large, but the work flow is not well thought out of, for E.g : people collect their coffee etc outside the cafe near Gate 1 and that impacts the boarding at Gate 1 , near gate 3 there is this vague obstruction of a small bill board which impacts the movement of people ( its bang in the middle of no where!!!)

And dudes - where are the charging points for laptops ?

But bottomline, the airport seems to be improving in leaps and bounds every time I travel, hopefully, we will have one to boast of....