City image suffers from bitter airport experience

Chennai: An airport is the gateway to a city. Chennai, which hosted the first ever flight in the country thanks to an Italian aviator, is not so blessed as to have an airport commensurate with its status as a metropolis and its place in history as a gateway to the south of India. Apart from the ticklish issue of building a major greenfield airport at faraway Sriperumbudur or renovating and refurbishing the existing facility much nearer the city, in Meenambakkam itself, what has affected the image is the quality of the construction. But then, there is always the hope that, since whatever had to fall off has already done so in eventful 2014, the threat to users and service providers may have receded.

It is, however, not just the shaky terminal buildings which are the issue. It appears the stormy skies of price warfare and rising maintenance input costs have led to a situation of stunted growth in services. Last week a passenger could not help bombarding the staff of India’s leading private airline with verbal volleys by the minute as a flight landed in wet weather.

The leaky shuttle to the terminal saw the temperature rise on the very short ride to the terminal. The driver, a lower level employee, could be expected to do little. Lump it in silence was his practised response as the passenger berated him, reminding him that everyone in the bus was a paying passenger. All hell broke loose once the baggage reached the terminal through the carousel. Each bag came dripping wet as if it had just taken a dip in the Bay of Bengal. Given the recent history of aviation, we must consider ourselves fortunate that only our bags got wet and not the fliers. Even then, it told a tale of depressing reality of a city’s premier services not having kept pace with modernity.

To receive wet bags off the oldest terminal in Meenambakkam may have been routine. To see them rendered like this in 2015 was testament to failing services. The airline staff kept saying ‘sorry’, only to be beaten back by more verbal volleys questioning what ‘sorry’ would do to wet bags. The voluble passenger who raised the issues then had to walk away hoping he had pushed the airline into seeing the folly of its ways. There is no guarantee, however, that the same shoddy experience won’t befall others who fly through the billion dollar plus refurbished airport.

The bitter experiences don’t end inside the terminal. There is a huge shock at the pre-paid taxi kiosks, which charge Rs500 for a journey into the city for the same distances that are covered these days for less than half that price in web based taxis. The ride from St Mary’s Road to the airport had cost exactly Rs 215 in TaxiForSure with an excellent driver negotiating his way smoothly. The return journey with a surly driver endangering every vehicle on the left edge of the road was hair raising in peak hour traffic.

Why the fare doubles when coming to the city from the airport as opposed to getting there is a mystery no city will explain. Chennai is not the only metro overcharging air travellers. It happens in every city as high contract fee paying taxi companies and public black and yellow cabs fleece customers on the grounds that the driver has to wait several hours for his turn to come in the lengthy pre-paid taxi ranks.

The Metro might solve the issue for those who wish that the taxi monopoly at the airport would be broken soon. But then, given the interminable delays, it may take more than a couple of years before the Metro travels to the fancy-looking shell that houses the Meenabakkam airport station. Meanwhile, fliers have simply to lump it all – the leaky roof of the shuttle, wet bags and excessive taxi fares. Welcome to Chennai!