Descend into Chaos

So 18 days after we set foot on Europe, we took off from Milan Malpenso airport, and flying across the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, touched down at Dubai. The layover at Dubai was five hours this time. Cashing in the food voucher courtesy Emirates took a good part of the five hours, as it involved a three kilometer walk inside the airport, from terminal A to Terminal C complete with a train ride, and then backtracking to Terminal B from where our flight to Cochin was scheduled to leave. Anyway, next morning, we landed at Cochin International Airport.

 

To call the scene at Cochin International Airport as a fish market would be to insult the fishmongers. The design is faulty to begin with, with the paths of the boarding and disembarking passengers (of various aerobridges) crossing, and one group being held up to let the other group pass.

Next comes immigration. To be fair, the staff on duty are doing their jobs to the best of their abilities, but they are clearly understaffed to manage peak hour rush. I don't get it why they can't have a single queue, and  let the person at the front of the queue go to whichever immigration desk becomes free. That way everyone gets  an equitable chance without having to test one's luck by joining one queue, only to find it slow moving.

The real problem comes after the immigration check. There are two added levels of screening. One to see if someone has “escaped “ without any entry stamp, and another metal detector to hear if someone is smuggling in gold inside their rectum. The problem compounds when people break the line with impunity, and crash in ahead of you without even a pang of guilt.

The scene at baggage carousels is even more chaotic. I had the pleasure of watching Casablanca, one of my favorites, through the in-flight TV provided by Emirates. The situation at the station at Paris (Gare du Lyon?), where the last train to Marsailles was leaving before the German tanks came rolling in was more orderly than the baggage collection area at Cochin International Airport in April 2016.

After a long wait for well over an hour, our baggage finally came trundling through the conveyor belt. I grabbed it before anyone else took a fancy to our bags and simply walked away with it. For all I care, I could have walked away with ours and any bag I fancied, and then made a claim that we never received our bags, with no one any wiser.

The new terminal at CIAL may improve the material infrastructure, but who would improve the basic culture of the people using it, and who will instill a sense of commitment in the people responsible for running it?

ALSO SEE: Key takeaways from our tour