What Ho! Ah! To live with a What Ho on my lips and a Gentleman's Gentleman… {sigh}… Such is life…

Hyderabad's New International Airport – Shamsabad or SHAMEsabad? An email from a frustrated user

The following is an email sent by Prem S. Mani to an internal email list at work. Prem describes the experience of landing at Hyderabad's spanking new "International" Airport at Shamsabad.

Hi,
Sharing my experience with the so called Airport with International Standards.

I was traveling in Deccan Flight from Coimbatore to Hyderabad. Original Travel time was 19:30 to 21:30. However, flight was delayed by 2 hours due to the late arrival of same flight from Hyderabad. (root cause - flight from hyd)

Flight lands at the Hyd Airport as per the Revised Expected Arrival Time at 11:30 PM. All passengers were very happy & are about to go back to their home. However, nothing is happening. All of us were in aircraft for 40 Minutes. Reason: The passenger bus has not yet arrived. Pilot & crew blamed openly the New Airport for the delay. The aircraft was having passengers of all ages including little children, senior citizens. Imagine the parents' situation who were trying to pacify their kids in that situation. Well that was just the start of a bigger drama.

After 40 minutes, all of us got down & went to the airport waiting room.

Next problem - luggage.
There were several passengers from different flight & locations who didn't know where to look for their luggage. No signs anywhere. All TV screens either flashing some GMR Ads or some obsolete flight information.

Airline staff & GMR staff were present, but they were only existing there. No of them had any clue whats going on. No time when the luggage would come? Where to pick them up from?

Passengers waited for 30 minutes understanding that delays should be normal on Day-1. But nothing was actually happening.

When inquired by passengers about their luggage, the staff were very clever & innovative in telling their own stories. Here are some replies:

- Bags have been unloaded & they should reach here in a few minutes
- Bags are undergoing screening (strange answer, but was given)

Then the blame game started. Airline staff started telling new new lies & shifted the blame on GMR.

None of the airline staff were trying to do anything & they were shielding their seniors by updating them regularly about the events or rather the other way around, seniors kept the most junior staff to face the passengers. Very suprisingly the airline staff were all these young fresher girls & no one senior was available in the near vicinity & they were totally not in the scene.

One of the passengers had the mobile number of the COO-Operations GMR & people started calling him & Airline staff to escape from their side pointed us to the person being called who was just walking by.

This COO very coolly replies to contact the Airline staff as GMR is no way responsible for any of this confusion.

Some people tried to call up the media to get their attention, but no one didn't know the proper method to be approached for that.
All this confusion went on for 2 HOURS & one of the lot of the baggage arrived.

I was lucky I got my stuff in the first lot & it was 1.30 PM after a wait of 2 hours in middle of all this. But there were still many families waiting for their bags to arrive.

Regarding the baggage handling by the automated belts, not sure if the method is safe for the stuff inside the bags. All the bags slide down a slope of around 2 feet & bangs against the wall of the automated conveyor belt. Would be very suprised if any of the fragile stuff people normally carry would be available in one piece after seeing whats happening to all the bags in the new airport.

At the end of of all this - No person assumed responsibility for all this chaos & people had accept it as normal behavior on Day-1. Why should we accept this? If the airport is not ready its not ready. Why have they made general public suffer from all this? Questions which will remain unanswered.

Hope all these things are sorted out. Lets wait & watch.

Regards,

Prem S Mani.

As Prem says, lets wait and watch. I am sure everything will be great when Sonia Gandhi lands at this airport. It's just the fare paying public that should not expect any "service".