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Journalism of Courage
We are quick to see the worst in any mega project in the country, and the new international airport at Hyderabad is no exception. Since the Rs 2,500-crore Shamshabad Airport was launched a week ago, reports have been written about how it is “too far” from the city, how it “lacks luggage trolleys”, and how there “aren’t enough signboards”. Few mention that more than 10,000 passengers are using the airport daily since it opened on March 23, that no flights have been cancelled till now, or that within three days, the airport’s efficiency had gone up by 45 per cent.
Airport launches, in fact, are rarely a smooth affair. Britain, for example, is looking for cover right now over the chaos at the newly opened T-5 terminal at Heathrow Airport, which was 20 years in the planning and which has spent nearly a week fighting disasters. Saying that it may take a week more for things to settle, Aviation Minister Jim Fitzpatrick on Monday called the T-5 mess “a blow to national pride”. With the new, equally controversial Bangalore airport likely to start operations this month, a recap of airport launch/revamp controversies across the world:
HEATHROW AIRPORT
MARCH 2008
The $8.6-billion new Terminal 5, whose construction was cleared after the longest public inquiry in British history, was expected to transform Heathrow’s reputation as a grubby and overcrowded transport hub despite being one of the world’s busiest airports. It went through six months of trial, involving 16,000 volunteers putting everything from parking to the toilets to check. However, since it was finally launched on March 27, almost 300 flights have been scrapped and at least 28,000 bags unexpectedly separated from their owners because of glitches, particularly in the state-of-the-art, 17-km baggage handling system that was designed to handle 12,000 bags an hour. There have been other problems as well, like employees arriving for work not being able to make their way to the staff parking. If opposition leaders are calling it a national embarrassment, British Airways—which was one of the proponents of the project, with T-5 as its exclusive hub—has admitted “it is definitely not our finest hour”. The chaos continues…
SUVARNABHUMI AIRPORT
SEPTEMBER 2006
Glitches with the baggage handling system at Bangkok’s new international airport—opened three months too early on the insistence of premier Thaksin Shinawatras—resulted in 1,200 pieces of luggage missing their flights over the first weekend of its launch. The airport had to call in 50 soldiers to help manually direct 6,700 bags to outgoing flights. Thai Airways had to to dole out hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation to travellers. There were also complaints of a severe shortage of toilets. With problems persisting six months down the line, including cracked taxiways and allegations of corruption, the old Don Muang airport was reopened for domestic flights.
CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT
MAY 2004
One airport director had called Terminal 2E, with its arched roof and sleek design, the “pride of the airport”. However, 11 months after its launch—nearly a month behind schedule because of construction problems—the roof of the terminal at the Paris airport collapsed, leading to the death of four passengers. A massive section of the vaulted ceiling fell onto a seated waiting area, leaving a hole 50 metres by 30 metres, with some eyewitnesses describing it as “a scene out of an earthquake”.
KUALA LUMPUR AIRPORT
JUNE 1998
The airport was controversial from the start as it was planned 51 km from Kuala Lumpur, on 100 sq km of land, making it one of the largest airport sites in the world. It required no demolition of private property, was built in four and a half years and inaugurated a week ahead of Hong Kong International Airport. However, after the first flight took off with PM Mahathir Mohamad, the inauguration was marked with problems. Aerobridge, bay allocation systems and baggage handling broke down, and queues formed throughout the airport. While most of the issues were sorted out eventually, the baggage handling system continued to be plagued with problems, and was finally put up for a new complete replacement tender in 2007.
HONG KONG AIRPORT
JULY 1998
The $20 billion airport, which was promoted as a symbol of Hong Kong’s Swiss watch-like efficiency ahead of its official handover to China, lurched from crisis to crisis after its launch. That included chaos in the passenger terminal to computer glitches paralysing air cargo operations, passengers waiting two hours to get off planes, lost luggage, blank flight information boards and seafood rotting on the tarmac. There was much finger-pointing. The bottomline: 10 years hence, Hong Kong International Airport has been ranked as the best in the world.
