Originally Posted by
italdesign
I transferred from T2 to T3 yesterday. It was shockingly long and unpleasant.
1. It's hard to believe in this day and age, an airport of a modern city like Tokyo has no train connecting passengers between terminals.
2. We waited 20 minutes for a bus to arrive.
3. The drive took at least 20 minutes. I was starting to wonder if we were being hijacked.
4. Passengers were packed like sardines.
I once had an I-I transfer in Tokyo with a 45min layover. With this terminal transfer, if I had anything under 1.5 hours, I would have had zero lounge time and in danger of missing the flight.
In contrast, I landed in KUL a few hours later (on ANA). Their aerotrain being out of service, they had business class buses ferrying pax from Satellite terminal to Main terminal. The bus seats were opulent and spacious, there was no wait, and there was even a mini waiting area with tea. It put ANA's HND transfer experience to absolute shame.
The T2 international area is not a great solution to the problem that T3 was almost already too small before the expansion of slots in 2020. ANA and Haneda Airport came up with the concept of cordoning off a section of the domestic terminal and add the necessities for international arrival and departures. It is not really easy to add a train under the existing and operating infrastructure.
But I am surprised the busses are so few and far between.