Teething troubles dog Bengaluru airport

Teething troubles dog Bengaluru airport
Anshul Dhamija & Saurabh Sinha |TNN

Bangalore/ New Delhi: It was a nightmare in daylight. Passengers, senior airline officials and their staff had a harrowing experience on Day 1 of operations at the new Bengaluru International Airport (BIA).
Passengers catching morning flights were stranded for close to 90 minutes as the Air Traffic Control (ATC) malfunctioned. The crucial flight plan link terminals, which communicate the departing aircraft’s flight path to airports, collapsed, stranding 10 aircraft all ready to take off.
“Our pilot informed us of a one-hour delay as BIA’s ATC was not functioning,’’ said a Hyderabad-bound passenger. After about 60 minutes, the ATC was rebooted and started functioning. In a e-mail clarification to STOI, BIAL said: “...this is not true.”
When senior airline officials contacted BIAL authorities, all they said was: “Flight delays are the fault of the ATC, which is handled by the Airports Authority of India (AAI).’’ Interestingly, AAI holds a 13% stake in the public entity, Bangalore International Airport, registered under the Indian Companies Act.
The confusion continued well into the afternoon. On the ground, there was complete chaos as the airport was shortstaffed. “There was no power, no baggage loaders, no aerodrome personnel, absolutely no manpower. There was just nothing at the airport,’’ said an airline official. “To keep the situation under control, we had to bring in our own support staff,’’ he added.
Things got worse later. Passengers had to queue up for over an hour at the baggage claim. Some passengers suffered a four-hour delay in getting their baggage. Airline cabin crew and pilots were stranded at the terminal building as the aerobridges could not be opened. “We’ve been telling BIA authorities to move operations from the old airport in a phased manner so that no inconvenience is caused,’’ said an airline official.
In the evening, all flight information screens were still showing delayed arrivals and departure of aircraft.
Earlier, BIAL submitted a report to the DGCA in which it highlighted the shortage of security and immigration personnel. On Friday night, when the airport opened, the international security area had queues where people took up to 15 minutes to complete the formalities as two of the five security lines were unmanned. Nine of the 18 immigration booths at arrival and departure were unmanned.