Originally Posted by
Land-of-Miles
Beware departing Male is a zoo and typical third world airport experience. We found massive queues around the BA departure times. We only just managed to check in on time after queuing for over an hour to get into the terminal and past the first level of security.
The third party lounge is poor and we were too late to use it anyway, we did however drop in at the other third party lounge (also for PP and HSBC Premier cardholders). This made it easy to keep tabs on the large queue to the boarding gate/bus point in relative comfort.
I am afraid departing Male even in CW is an unpleasant experience. Made worse by the airport being completely dry.
I must say, the times I've been, I have had the opposite departures experience - arrived at the airport just around the 2 hour mark, maybe 5 minute wait through the first level of security, no queue at the CW desks, though always at WT. Straight through passport control. Lounge adequate - I've been to far worse within the system. Boarding is the worst part of the whole experience, crowded and hot gates, and each of the times I've been there been sent down to the gate long before boarding begins. From memory Level 2 security is done at the gate???