Santiago Airpot gets busy

[ivar]

I was at the airport in Santiago on Saturday, and it was busy... very busy. I had my mobile with me and took some photos. As you can see, the lines to check in are long... so please make sure that you have plenty of time if you are traveling from Santiago de Compostela airport this summer.

 

[lillypond]

No different to Sydney airport then

Do you know the first thing I thought when I saw the photos?
How modern and shiny !
What does this say about me?

My three travel adventures out of Australia have been to New Zealand, India and Brazil. The airport in Delhi was unbelievable, airport in Buenos Aires was a smoke-filled zone.....
I haven't been to Europe at all ....... well I was born in Ireland but whisked off to Australia.

I am computer challenged and only just now found the 'new posts' page, although it is glaringly obvious !!

Ivar: My attempt to open a chatroom was dismal. It was great to meet in *person (real time) two lovely forum members, Sonia and Maria, but as you would well appreciate, the venture could not work without a band of Admins. as I personally can't open room 24/7. Paltalk is a great service though - I often listen into Spanish music forums, to attune my ears and I have even visited some Language rooms. Although these are too advanced and go well beyond my 'hola' I was able to find some great Spanish learning aids which I will post in misc. later today. Have to run to my Spanish class.........
hasta la vista,
lillypond.

 

[Joseph Chan]

Hi lillypond,
For Ivar, we arrived very early for our flight to Stansted from Santiago and there was an unexpected huge crowd. We are seasoned travelers used to crowds at Kingsford Sydney, Heathrow, Los Angeles, Singapore, Rome, and other international airports, our research showed that Santiago is a tiny airport in proportion to the other airports.

We found part of the problem were:-
a. Checking counters did not open early enough, crowds built up as the staff did not turn up until two hours before departure. This can be solved by paying the poorly paid clerks an extra hour wages so they an open an hour earlier.
b. Passport control opened late, passengers lined up at the counter but there were not enough officers to process the papers when it eventually opened.
c. Non-EU passengers had to fill in an extra form, they had to line up till they reached the counter, was handed a form, then asked to exit the queue to fill in the form. Then to go to the back of the Queue. Much simpler if there was a notice and available form before the line so that pax could fill in and hand the form back.
d. The line for the gates to Stansted and Manchester shared the same passport control cubicles. As the flight departed around the same time passengers for both aircrafts using the single passport control caused a huge bottleneck.
e. There were other problems which with a bit of planning, and a boot to the back of the persons responsible for opening the counters late, could be easily solved. It is a management problem as the airport is modern and has ample unused capacity.

For llilypond,

I tried to get into the paltalk chatroom and found it very user unfriendly, mainly because it needs to have a person live at both ends. The other problem was that it was difficult to find and to log on, the site was hidden deep amongst layers of other indexes. Try another chatroom which allows messages to be archived and opened at leisure. My children and grandchildren seem to be able to chat on other sites, not too computer-savvy grandpa could ask them. I think they use IMmessenger, myspace, the old IRC, hi5, and others. It would be nice to have an on-line chat as I am on New Zealand time.

Grandpa Joe