Tuesday, January 27, 2009

5 hours too soon

Killing time at the Mangalore Airport is an almost impossible task, trust me when I say there is nothing you can do, you can't even take a short walk as the entire waiting area is a few sq. feet! Breakfast was on Kingfisher at the only restaurant within the airport, the book and handicraft shop held my attention for only a few minutes and of course the duty free shop was off limits to me (being a domestic passenger).

The only other outlets are a tiny tea shop, an MMP's Cashew and dry fruit shop, Karlsburg - Merchandise for Men!, Centrium foreign exchange where they sell 1 USD for 52 Rs and buy it for 45 Rs, another tiny hangyo icecream outlet which did not make a single sale the entire time I was waiting and a snack shop which sells puffs (a kind of pastry) at an absurd price, I had to ask if a pinch of caviar was added in it, I swear, she looked at me like I was weird! But then I think all airports in India are the same with regard to food, overpriced... And then there is one scanning machine as soon as you enter, I know it analyzes a sample of something, looking for explosives maybe, it was not used and the security guard would not tell!

One fact about the Airport, there are a lot of airline staff, they keep walking around, carry your bags into the airport if you want them to, they are on the constant lookout for people who may be flying on their airline, many might approach you if they can't see the tag on your bag! Don't know if it's a good thing. And of course there is no internet access at the airport, I don't say absolutely, because there are some ways!

Everytime I looked at my watch there were atleast two hours to go, the frustrating part, the delay was announced in increments, first an SMS of a 30 min delay, reached airport at + 30 min to be told that the delay was now 2 hours, then 4, then finally 5! and in this time, one source told me that my flight was canceled! Some passengers decided to harass the airline staff but really it's tough to blame them for the fog in Bangalore. (The flight did not leave Chennai due to the fog in B'lore and we were waiting for the flight from Chennai-B'lore to arrive so that we could depart! Circular effect).

Anyway, All's well that ends well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, 5 hours! The cramped feeling is quite nauseating. I could barely tolerate 5 minutes waiting there.

The only good thing about it is arriving there - the walk out is so short and baggage pickup is quick.

-M