Friday, October 03, 2008

How to Make Mumbai Airports Nicer?

Here's my free advice to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport officials to whom it may concern:
  1. Please put the baggage carrying carts in a vending machine where people pay money to get a cart. Have those vending machines on every block of the airport.


  2. Either merge the two airports or don't give passengers flights that arrive at one and depart at the other within 5 hours or less.


  3. Fire those employees who have invented the modern panchaayat at the airport to chat for hours at like 2 AM in the morning when passengers are frantically asking around for crucial information affecting their flight schedules.


  4. Educate the information booth employees to know what the flight schedules are, even better is to fire them and put self help LCD screens instead of those time wasters who are good for nothing and will wave their hand in some random direction saying "I don't know" when passengers ask them for small information such as where is the counter for a certain airline.


  5. There's construction all over the place, which I'm really happy about because things can only get better from here. High hopes? I dunno. Any how, while you're at it, put some of those LCD screens at every gate so that passengers know where their next flight departs from.


  6. A piece of 2x2 sq ft paper stuck on a counter by scotch-tape/cello-tape with airlines name hand written on there does not count as an airline counter. Please, spend some money to get the airlines' names up so that people who walk from 15-20 ft away can see the counter they're looking for. Sheesh!


  7. Either merge Jet airways and Air India or merge their flights going from Mumbai to Ahmedabad. What's with the ridiculous flight schedule that says all the Jet airways and all the Air India flights between these two cities would depart from the domestic airport except for the very first flight of the day by Air India - the one in early morning departs from International airport. I do understand that Air India guys are trying to be more considerate to the passengers by having them not change the airports but those id10ts at the door send everyone to domestic airport without looking at the airlines they've tickets for. And if you don't plan to do anything about this, at least put up those LCD screens I mentioned that say what airport and terminal the flights depart from. God!


  8. Please please please start fining heavily to the passengers that remove any baggage that does not belong to them from the baggage claim area and put it aside in a corner. If you didn't realize, this wastes very valuable time of the affected passengers and thus in turn making them miss their next flight.


  9. What's with the labelling and stamping of each security scanned baggage? I mean come on, where did you get that from? Sounds very lame practice and to be honest, no one even checks that except for the guys who put it on. FYI, this is a big time waster.


  10. Control your hyper employees who start acting like high-class coolies for the passengers who just got off their flights. Some passengers prefer to spend a little extra money to buy their spinner baggage and don't really need your help to push their baggage; you guys are not realizing how miserable you're making the already tired and thoroughly annoyed passengers for some lousy amount of money. Did I already say this? Yeah, putting the carts in vending machine will solve this as the airport will make the much needed money and the passengers won't have to deal with the stalker airport coolies.


Thanks for reading. Hope this list would help make better plans for your future projects. Hopefully, I will be able to break my promise to avoid these airports at any cost in future.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

mumbai airport services are one of the worst i have seen. i know it's a big (pardon my limited knowledge of it's biggness) airport and difficult to organize, but that's what they are paid for. the architecture and interior design of new airport is really bad. No signages i suppose to help the passengers. it's not only annoying for the passengers it's for them too who are waiting there.

btw are you visitin India?

Sakhi said...

kaash the airport authorities can read these points!!

Soham Shah said...

Ha ha ha .. Kanan u r asking for too much .. hard to digest !!

Well, when I used to arrive in Mujbai from LA, I used to hate the mumbai airport authorotoes for their letharguy and for the total chaos at the airport due to their mis organization .. But now I hv been here since a year and I even dont consider it now .. It has become a common routine now ..

Yeah, when u come from abroad, u will find it disgusting but eventually we'll get used to it .. U should keep in mind that even the supreme court judge has said that even Supreme GOD cant save this country ..

Ha ha .. I'm not giving up at all .. I know someday someone will change it all ..

Cuckoo said...

Hmmm... very angry, eh ?

Upset rather. Have you ever gone to Delhi airport. Your'll start liking Mumbai airport. :-)

Cuckoo

Stone said...

I second Cuckoo's comment :-)

Kanan said...

Kumar, you're very right. I've noticed that about Mumbai airports since last three years. I'm really hoping though that they change them for good. My plan is to avoid Mumbai airports at any cost now. No upcoming India visits yet as I was there early this year only.

Sakhi, I'm thinking I should forward the list to them. Tell me what you think. If you encourage me I might just find their email address from their site and send it to them. I'm seriously wanting to do that now.

Soham, don't get used to it then they won't do anything about it. It's people like us who can make our voices heard and may be they'll do something about it over the time. India has so much good and transportation is also quite wide spread, if only people made little more effort - the authorities and travelers, it'd get so much better.

Cuckoo, no, never been to Delhi, but I've been to both the ones in Ahmedabad and it's the same story there as well. One of them is new but still it can use some help for sure, the older one is a nightmare! It's about 12x12 sq ft area and they have two doors on opposite sides, one for arriving passengers and the other for departing, imagine people running with their carts loaded with baggage that weighs 50 lbs or more and in between that you've got a U-shaped baggage claim belt with no side bars. If you're standing at the corner of it, the baggage falls on your knees instead of making a turn on the belt. And if you've very friendly helpful guy standing next to you he might just start pulling the baggage off the belt for you because while you're trying to push it back on the belt he thinks you're trying to get hold of your baggage while it's moving super fast on the belt. Just imagine that, you are trying to throw it as far away as possible but he's pulling it off towards you. And to say no to him in all this before he's taken it off... I give up complaining about it now!

Stone, looks like Delhi is not worth flying into as well? I'll have to find some miracle airlines for next time. Until then...

Mana said...

lol.. Hope the airport authority read this :-)

Solitaire said...

It is very sad that an international airport in such a major city is so pathetic.

Kanan said...

Manasa, your comment made me laugh. :D

Sneha, very sad, indeed.

Anonymous said...

I have to agree that the Delhi airport is much, much, much worse. Took me over three hours to check in once. Ridiculous!

But these are ideas the airport authorities should really read!

Kanan said...

Memsaab, is that so? But Delhi has one airport, right? Wouldn't that make things better comparatively? Just the thought of it gets me all frustrated.