RECENTLY the Managing Director of the PTDC said: “Pakistan expects a big boost in tourism inflow this summer.” It would be of great help if he paid a visit to the Islamabad International Airport as an ordinary passenger and experienced all those things that tourists face during their arrival at, and departure from, the airport. It will do him a world of good. He will discover all the shortcomings of our society in no time — indiscipline, disorganization, apathy and indifference to social issues and bureaucratic inertia being some of them. We seem to have accepted all such things as part of our tradition and never complain about them. At the airport, it takes an hour or so to check in, and this does not include the time spent at the check-in counter itself. This is not something ordained by any supreme authority and should be addressed as a problem equally important, if not more, as the president’s uniform. Our authorities don’t seem to realize the gravity of the issue. I would like to elaborate on the subject.
While travelling abroad, the usual scene is something like this: You get off the car at the drop-off point and take a trolley to collect the baggage, put your suitcase on it and start walking to the departure lounge. You think it would take you half an hour at most to check in, and harbour the notion that you would have an extra hour to browse the free Internet. You are in for a great shock.
The first hurdle you face is a crowd of people gathered outside the departure gate to bid farewell to their loved ones. Their flight may be after four hours’ time. But they block your access to the trolley lane, and it requires some skill and dexterity to overcome this obstacle. Then you discover that the movement forward is jerky and painfully slow. A glance at the front end provides the answer. A person in uniform is checking the tickets and passports of all passengers before letting them move on. Not having seen this drill at any other airport around the globe you wonder why the Pakistanis adopt their own unique ways. The wrist watch reveals that it has taken you 15 to 20 minutes just to enter the departure lounge.
Both these delays can be taken care of very easily. The trolley lane should be extended up to the road and its entrance kept free from the non-passengers. The checking system at the entrance is absolutely unnecessary. A board stating ‘Passengers Only’ coupled with verbal warnings from the ASF men should do the trick. Despite all this, if someone does transgress he will have no easy exit. Prosecute one or two, and word will spread.
Inside the lounge there is another something typically Pakistani and not seen anywhere else at international airports. I’m referring to the custom check for the departing passengers. What do they try to check anyway? Drugs, gold, antiques or the ultimate nightmare of President Bush — a nuke? Whatever it is, the procedure is horribly old-fashioned. They insist on opening every piece of luggage. They soon discover that our suitcases, crammed with different items, are easier to open, but much harder to close. It takes some minutes for each passenger to go through. Apart from that, there is total chaos in the way people are handled. There is no concept of making a queue and everybody tries to elbow his way through the crowd. This takes another 20 odd minutes to move ahead.
It will be good to find out how many passengers have been caught violating the law in all these years of ‘thorough’ checking. If the number is less than one per cent, we could safely discard this procedure and instead post a person near the scanning machine to check suspicious packages.
By now the passenger has already lost 40 to 50 minutes. The movement after this is smooth enough except that some airlines want you to produce a photocopy of the passports and visas. You have already provided a copy to the travel agent who issued the ticket and is justified in wondering as to the utility of this demand. The aviation authority needs to took into this and tell the airlines to make their own photocopies if they so desire and not harass the passengers.
The next stop is the immigration counter. You get in the queue that moves at an extremely leisurely pace. The FIA will do well to set a standard for their employees in the time taken to clear the passengers. Otherwise they give the impression that they are going to be there till their shift ends, so why rush things, As you go past this counter, another FIA man is standing there to ensure that nobody sneaks past him. He should normally be content to see the stamp on the boarding pass, but that is too trivial a job for an educated man. He insists on seeing the passport and visa. If you tell him firmly that it has already been checked by the airline and his colleagues, he would let you go by.
Next comes the security scan of hand baggage. Unlike anywhere else in the world, we have our very own procedure. Each piece must have a tag, which is perforated by the person manning the counter and stamped by another one sitting at a desk further ahead. Despite intensive thinking, I have not been able to figure out the rationale for this. Unlike the checked-in baggage the hand carried one is not sealed and the tag can easily be transferred to another bag.
Finally the passenger is through with all the formal ties and is greeted by a nervous airline employee who whisks him straight to the boarding counter and on to the aircraft. The one hour he hoped to spend at the duty free shop and on the Internet vanishes into thin air.
Back in the ‘80s I ran into the director of the Civil Aviation of Dubai at the Dubai Airport. He told me with some pride that he had succeeded in reducing the time passengers take to come out of the airport quite significantly. If my memory serves me right the figure was something between 10 and 15 minutes. Impressive, isn’t it? Why can’t we follow such examples?
