Suvarnabhumi Expansion

[Guest fountainhall]

it must also be about the only airport with a golfing course right next to it, occasionaly golf-balls land on the tarmac. it must also be one of the very few airports in this world where a gay brothel/massage-house is located under its approach (K-male).

Haha! I had not realised K-Male was under the flight path! I always wondered what would happen if a long-hitting golfer really sliced his drive as an aircraft was passing. "Golf ball cripples jet on take off?"

 

from LGW to LHR you can go about 6 times/hour by train to London and then the tube . . . But thats of course more changes and more carrying luggage around.

And I had not thought of that either! I reckon you're right about luggage, though. I can handle the Piccadilly line to Heathrow with a trolley bag, but definitely not with a big case and an on-board trolley bag, especially at rush hour. But transferring between BKK and Don Mueang will be a breeze once the train link is ready.

[Guest fountainhall]

There is a half-page advertisement in today's Bangkok Post supposedly showing a few smiling airport staff and the slogan:

 

"Safety and Service are Our Prime Priorities

To Ensure You Travel With Smiles"

 

How nice! Maybe someone in the airport hierarchy can have a word in the ear of the Director of Immigration so that his staff can soon give us the occasional smile on arrival or departure

[Guest fountainhall]

A columnist in The Bangkok Post today has another gripe about the long lines at Immigration. He even posts a photo from a site www.panthip.com/cafe/blueplanet showing a long snaking line for one of the Immigration areas. I cannot read the Thai but the caption seems to indicate the photo was taken on January 24th.

 

The reason for the long lines, says the article, is because the Immigration Department has opened up more lines for fast track passengers, presuably thereby reducing those for others. Fast track is offered now to most first and business class passengers, whereas before it was only offered to diplomats and government officials. Why, he asks, should speedy immigration depend on the price of your ticket, when it is the airlines who get the benefit of the ticket revenue, not the airport? He goes on -

 

Should the quality of a service offered by a government agency vary depending on the purchasing power of the person being served? Don't we already pay taxes in general and airport tax in particular? Should we have to pay even more to avoid suffering in a long queue, one without even Krispy Kreme at the end of it. (Rolls eyes).

http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/218909/if-an-ape-wore-shoes-could-it-walk-like-a-man

 

Which is a valid point? Do airlines, in fact, pay the Immigration Department for this a service? I never thought about it before.

[Guest]

Perhaps they intend to get more people to pay directly for fast track. To do that, they need to make the normal lines slow enough to annoy people.

 

This is the type of thing a only monopoly airport could get away with. However, I've not yet found queues to be excessive.

 

What I don't understand is why the immigration process takes so long whilst at the counter. They scan the passport number, take a photograph & after that, what exactly do they do? Collect a lot of irrelevant information? Surely most of the data that does matter can be collected off the airline booking system?

[Guest fountainhall]

Perhaps they intend to get more people to pay directly for fast track. To do that, they need to make the normal lines slow enough to annoy people.

The Post article suggests that fast track privileges can be bought -

 

According to accounts on pantip.com, the tickets are available for a few hundred baht. Also, if you hold a certain credit card, you can collect 1,000 points and get a free Fast Track ticket. My colleague called Suvarnabhumi, but they said they didn't know anything about it; immigration handles the area. The colleague then called immigration, who said they have given Fast Track tickets to airlines, but no one is making money off them. Of course not. Never. No way.

I have never heard of that before. Even it were true, the writer seems not to be aware that fast track is now standard for premium passengers at a lot of international airports. Who pays for it? No idea, but I assume the airlines must build it into their prices!

 

What I don't understand is why the immigration process takes so long whilst at the counter . . . Surely most of the data that does matter can be collected off the airline booking system?

If you travel to the USA, much of that information now has to be provided both to the airline and to the Homeland Security's website in advance of travel. Unless you then get the Homeland Security's approval number, you will not be allowed on board. In Thailand. however, the computer systems appear to be much more basic and a great deal slower. I have a one year retirement visa and multiple re-entry permit, and the amount of checking this requires on entry is just ridiculous (exit is much faster). The information's all there in the passport as well as on the screen. Yet, it seems to require some sort of treble checking, plus reorganising of the date stamps and goodness knows what else. No wonder people in the queues behind me get a bit pissed-off.

[Guest anonone]

I have benefited from fast track numerous times. The airlines are very careful about who gets these passes, which leads me to believe they are either charged for them or given a certain allotment. The passes have the airline name on them, flight number, etc.

 

When I do not have fast track, I usually do pretty well at immigration. It certainly beats US immigration, where the lines are at least as long and the attitudes much worse....

 

I would love to see the situation improve, but if I am waiting in line at immigration it means I am back in Thailand. I can pretty much suffer through anything for that

[Guest]

I have a one year retirement visa and multiple re-entry permit, and the amount of checking this requires on entry is just ridiculous (exit is much faster). The information's all there in the passport as well as on the screen. Yet, it seems to require some sort of treble checking, plus reorganising of the date stamps and goodness knows what else. No wonder people in the queues behind me get a bit pissed-off.

 

Actually, date stamps should be consigned to history. Surely they can electronically record who enters and leaves?

 

As practical advice, I guess it could make sense to scan the queues & try to avoid joining the ones with potential retirement visa holders ahead.

[macaroni21]

I can vouch for that photograph taken at the airport of the queue leading to the queues at exit passport control. Yes, people had to queue approximately 45 minutes (that's what a man nearly reaching the head of the queue said out loud to anyone who cared to hear him) to reach the gateway where a few silly girls check that you have your passport and boarding passes before they allow you to enter the screened-off area. In there you join another set of queues (30 - 35 minutes) before reaching the immigration officer.

 

Many people were shocked when after reaching the head of the first queue they went through the gateway only to see that they had to join another queue. Tempers flared and basically all Thai staff fled rather than deal with hostile situations.

 

That afternoon, no more than 2 in 3 passport desks were operating which is the maximum I have ever seen in use. I have never seen 100 percent open.

 

As for why exit passport control is so slow, from my observations, it's simply because the computer system they use is slow. It gets slower when traffic is high, which is exactly when queues build up. It is possible -- this thought had come to me before -- that one reason they never open all desks is that if too many immigration officers try to access the computer system at the same time, it would crash.

 

Due to the delays at passport control, the air-side of Suvarnabhumi was an athletics contest. Half the people were running, skidding and pushing their way to the aircraft gates, hoping not to miss their flights.

[macaroni21]

Actually, date stamps should be consigned to history. Surely they can electronically record who enters and leaves?

 

Date stamps are very important when you have to prove that you were in or not in such and such a country at any point in time. You never know when you can be caught up in some investigation and you need to prove your whereabouts.

[Guest fountainhall]

Entry/Exit date stamps are unfortunately essential, as macaroni21 suggests, not so much for the country one has just visited but to show others when you have been where. But they are a complete nuisance in my view. Since Britain ditched its old larger passport with 96 pages in favour of the common EU passport format, UK citizens are lumbered with passports about 60% of the physical size and with half the number of pages. A great way for the issuing countries to make more money, no doubt! Since most immigration officers happily plonk their stamps in the middle of pages, regular travellers in parts of the world which require stamps, like Asia, end up with passports which need to be renewed regularly. My 10 year passport has never lasted more than 4 years.

 

At least Thai stamps are relatively small and I find the officers do try and fit 4 'ins' and 'outs' per page. In South America last year, careful positioning of the stamps could have meant 3 per page (they have larger stamps). As usual, however, the most I got was 2 - so 4 pages eaten up in just one trip! I find US Immigration equally insensitive to the lack of space issue.

 

My other beef is why those with retirement visas/multiple reentry permits in Thailand require any stamps at all! I have permanent residence in Hong Kong and I don't need any stamps. I don't even need my passport! Just my HK ID card and a thumbprint. So fast and uncomplicated for both entry and exit.

[Guest]

Luckily I've not experienced such queues when exiting from the airport.

 

Management of any properly run privatised airport should in theory be livid at such queues, because they result in reduced revenue from shopping passengers.

[Guest fountainhall]

I have experienced horrendous queues if I had an early departure or mid-afternoon arrival - but not as bad as macaroni21 has described. Once, before the days of fast track and my getting an APEC Business Travel Pass, flying to Tokyo on an 08:30 flight, it took a full 50 minutes to get to a desk. And arriving from Hong Kong in mid-afternoon, the queue at the west desks stretched back to the duty free area. Since those days, the APEC card has made arriving and departing so easy.

 

I have seen similarly long queues at other airports, but not often. JFK was so bad that I now try to enter the US through another gateway. Being a hub airport for flights from the US and Asia, Tokyo's Narita used to be about the worst. If you arrived in the early afternoon, you were in the company of at least 12 other jumbos. The foreigners' queue routinely was full to overflowing, whist that for Japanese was empty. Would the Japanese officials then reallocate more staff over to the foreigners side? No way! I often see very long queues at Hong Kong, but the Immigration staff take much less time to process each one.

 

Like all airports, Immigration at Suvarnabhumi is not under the control of the airport - and therein lies the problem. The airport management can tackle a lot of problems, but about Immigration they can do virtually nothing.