Monday, May 15, 2006

Airport woes

In the recent past, I have been to the Mumbai airports a couple of times to just come back exasperated.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport, Santacruz
There is constant policing to prevent people from parking near the terminals. I do understand why even then, people are happy to take rounds of the airport rather than park their cars in the Airport Parking Facility; the bloody parking costs Rs. 50. Now, not even ten rounds of the airport would burn a litre of fuel in my car, so why should I park it for the price of a litre? As a result the parking is half empty all the time, and the Authorities still do not learn to reduce the price. Sigh.

Sahar Airport, Andheri
All these hotels in Mumbai need to take care and train their staff (read: hotel car chauffeurs). It is pretty embarrasing to stand next to them while they go about cat calling every foreigner that exits the terminal, waving their boards above their heads. And even better, when the person who they have come to pick up finally responds to their frantic waving, they issue a "Good evening" and a "Aa gaya saala gora" in the same breath. 'Atithi Devo Bhava' or something was the government's campaign, wasn't it? Sigh.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I dont think tht the authorities need to lower the price...coz sumbudy travelling by air can definitely afford to pay 50 bucks..its got more to do with basic civic sense than anything else. I really hope privatisation leads to a better future for airports.

Siddhesh Mehra said...

they need to reduce it nachi.. 50 bucks for parking the car for 15 minutes is too much really