A More Positive Airport Thread?

[Guest fountainhall]

As has been widely reported, Suvarnabhumi now has 16 automatic gates for Thai passport holders - 8 on departure and 8 on entry. From what I hear, this does seem to be speeding up the Immigration process a bit. Whilst they are so far limited to Thai passport holders. the Immigration authorities did announce that after the trial period they would install more and open them up to other nationalities.

 

I was never sure how that would work, given that there would then be no TM card clipped to the passport and Immigration would have no knowledge of where a visitor is staying or his departure flight. However, Hong Kong has had a Frequent Visitor channel for some time now, and I just had an email from Cathay Pacific telling me that all Marco Polo Club members can now enrol for this fast track entry service.

 

To streamline your clearance process, enrol with your Marco Polo Club membership card and travel documents in person at the Immigration Department Enrolment Booths located at the North and South Arrival Halls of Terminal 1 – then simply scan your travel documents and thumbprint the next time you enter or leave Hong Kong.

 

If, once the AOT has installed another 16 or so automatic gates, TG was to do this for its Royal Orchid Plus members, it would cut down waiting times very substantially. But I hope the scheme will not just be limited to TG. Opening it up to foreign residents and retirement visa holders would be a logical next step.

[Rogie]

I have either been very lucky or passengers must have evaporated in the heat. Returning on Sunday at 6pm from a side trip to Burma there were no Q's at immigration, consequently baggage reclaim was my only delay. It was equally quiet flying out of the country on my outward leg on Wednesday evening of last week. Again, no Q's whatsoever at immigration or at security scanning.

 

My interpretation, based on what various people on this board and elsewhere have told us, is that it's a management problem. Yes, there are more passengers arriving and departing than is ideal for the way the airport was planned, but surely for the waiting times to vary so wildly, from reports of one to two hours Q'ing to the other extreme, no Q's at all, tells me it's a simple failure of management to get a firm grip on things. They just don't seem to be able to understand the concept of forward planning.

[Guest fountainhall]

it's a simple failure of management to get a firm grip on things. They just don't seem to be able to understand the concept of forward planning.

 

It's interesting to compare the way the BAA has approached the recent chaos at Immigration at London's Heathrow Terminal 5. It seems non-EU passengers had to wait up to 2 hours at certain times of the day. Within a week or two of this hitting the media and talk of the effect on inbound tourism, some 80 immigration staff at Manchester Airport turned up for work, only to be bused out to a waiting plane and flown to Heathrow where they put in a 4-hour shift before being flown back. Now staff from other Heathrow terminals are being shunted around during peak periods.

 

In that case, British cabinet ministers became quickly involved. At BKK, peak Immigration congestion with waiting times of well over an hour have been going on for at least 3 years. It has been highlighted in the media, in the travel magazines, on the internet - and no Thai Minister ever bothered to get involved until relatively recently. Now, with extra staff, the introduction of the snake system - years after many proposed it - and the eyes of the media firmly on BKK, the AOT and the Immigration Department have finally acted, and there are definite improvements.

 

Rogie is right in my view. It is a question of poor management and a lack of forward planning. If Immigration was more flexible in its rostering system and paid more attention to precisely when aircraft were arriving, staffing levels during each day could be adjusted to cope better with peaks. How many times have you arrived at Immigration with only a few desks open, the lines build, and only then do a few more officers eventually amble to their desks? Immigration always has several hours advance notice of what types of aircraft are arriving at which gates and how many passengers are on each. Is it that difficult to position officers once the signal is given that passengers are on their way from the plane?

 

Unfortunately, though, it seems a good example of the 'Thai-way,' whereby firstly many people are aware of a problem but are unable, for a variety of reasons, to alert those above in the AOT and the government; and secondly, it's easier for those in charge to turn a blind eye than have to upset the status quo by coming up with a radical solution.

 

But it is also partly due to two other factors we have discussed before: basic overcrowding in an airport built for a max. capacity of 45 million now having to handle 51 million - and increasing by 10% or thereabouts every year; and previous governments' stubborn determination to have all traffic flow through Suvarnabhumi, yet not providing funds and a crack of the whip to get expansion plans off the ground years before now. Transferring the lccs to Don Mueang was the only solution in the medium-term. It was encouraging to read in the media the other day that pressure is being put on the government to extend the Airport link to Don Mueang - another obvious solution to the airport transfer problem.

[Guest]

The UK situation is also totally unacceptable. They know how many passengers are expected -very accurately on the day & estimates months in advance must be within a few percent of the final figure. Waiting times should be less than 5 minutes per passenger. No excuses.