Now in ASK THE PILOT:
The Decline and Fall of the U.S. Airport. Our airports are terrible, and our airlines are finding it harder to compete. We’ve done it to ourselves through shortsightedness, underfunding, and flyer-unfriendly policies.
The other day I flew on Cathay Pacific from Bangkok to Amsterdam via Hong Kong. The connection process in HKG went like this: I stepped off the plane from Bangkok into a quiet, spacious, immaculately clean concourse, and walked to my connecting gate about six minutes away. A short while later I walked onto my flight to Amsterdam.
That’s it. Compare this, if you dare, to the process of making an international connection in the United States of America. Imagine you’re a foreign traveler arriving in the U.S. from Europe or Asia, with an onward connection either domestically or to a third country:
You step off the plane and make your way to the immigration hall, which as always is packed to capacity. After standing in line for more than an hour, you’re photographed and fingerprinted before finally being released into the baggage claim and customs hall. (Or maybe it takes even longer: after docking at the gate, airline station personnel inform you that due to extremely long lines at immigration, all passengers are being asked to remain aboard the aircraft for the time being.)
Your next task is to stand at the baggage carousel for twenty minutes and wait for your suitcase. American airports do not recognize the “in transit” concept, meaning that all passengers arriving from overseas, even if they’re merely transiting to a third country, are forced to claim and re-check their luggage. Once you’ve got your bag, another long line awaits you at the Customs checkpoint, followed by yet another long line at the luggage re-check counter. Finally you’re released into the terminal. Of course, this building is used for “international arrivals only” — another of those peculiarly American airport concepts — and your connecting flight is leaving from a totally different terminal on the other side of the airport. To get there, you walk outside and spend fifteen minutes in the rain waiting for a bus. And we haven’t even gotten to the worst part yet: once you’ve reached the correct terminal, it’s time for your security screening. The line at TSA is a good twenty minutes long, maybe more.
At long last you’re in the departure concourse, which is dirty, overcrowded and loud. Babies cry, CNN news monitors blare, and waves of public address announcements — most of them pointless and half of them unintelligible — wash over one another. How long did all of that take? Close to two hours one some days. Welcome to the American airport.
Two years ago in a CNN poll of 1,200 overseas business travelers who have visited the United States, a full twenty percent said they would not visit the United States again due to onerous entry procedures at airports, including long processing lines. Forty-three percent said they would discourage others from visiting the United States. Separately, U.S. Chamber of Commerce counsel Carol Hallett stated that “the United States risks falling behind Asia, the Middle East, and Europe as the global aviation leader.”
I’d say that battle was lost a long time ago.
For the full story and photos, see here...
http://www.askthepilot.com/the-decline-and-fall/
Enjoy,
PS