News Analysis
PHUKET airport delays are rapidly becoming the biggest barrier to development of tourism on Phuket.
Delays in reaching the Immigration counter on flying in, delays in reaching Immigration flying out - and worst of all, delays in even getting inside the airport building - are putting off people who might otherwise return to Phuket some day.
Phuketwan put the airport to the test this week, and marked it a complete failure. This reporter arrived at the airport at 8.20am for a Singapore-bound flight that was due to take off at 9.50am.
There was a long queue snaking back from the airport entrance, with more people constantly joining the queue. And this is a queue before getting in the airport door.
There were three more queues to come on the inside. Time to actually get into the airport: 10 minutes.
Fortunately once on the departure concourse, the baggage check-in queue is relatively short and negotiated in a few minutes. Access to the Immigration hall is gained at 8.40am - and then comes the full horror.
Inside the Immigration hall, queues at every one of the 20 counters stretch back at least 30 deep.
Precious minutes tick by, with passengers hoping that the checks will suddenly accelerate. But no. We wait, and wait, and wait, shuffling slowly forward.
A group of Chinese passengers make light of the delay by playing games with their children. Others are not so sanguine.
One passenger from the rear of the queue walks forward and asks the Immigration officer at the end of our line one question, then another, and another. All this is wasting the time for everyone in the queue, all of us equally anxious to catch flights.
We edge forward, slowly. A couple and three young children come forward to ask their one big question. They want to jump the queue. The woman smiles at the Chinese in the queue and says in English: ''We're tourists, we're tourists.''
You don't say. The Immigration officer waves them back.
I am three from the front when an AirAsia staffer comes out, calling for passengers on the flight to Singapore. I am saved. We go to the fast-track counter.
Now there is only one queue left to negotiate, the queue at the security scanner for the departure lounge. It's another stressful wait.
I make the bus to the plane with minutes to spare.
Ninety minutes spent negotiating an exit from Phuket for a flight to Singapore that is over in 100 minutes . . . yet at Changi Airport, access is a breeze. The biggest queue is for a taxi outside the airport, and that is an easy wait. It's the same on the flight back.
Moving through Changi Immigration is literally a stroll, interrupted by a two-minute check. Arriving back at Phuket, and it's an ugly scene all over again.
Phuket coped with seven million arrivals and departures in 2010, yet how many of those people were unhappy at delays either coming or going through Phuket airport?
How many were put off ever returning to Phuket? Perhaps a million - one in every seven?
There is no way the airport staff can be blamed for this failure of strategic planning. Immigration officers, pressured and sometimes harassed by understandably impatient passengers, must be as stressed at times as their customers.
The expansion of Phuket airport has been announced and a contractor should be appointed some time soon. Yet unless there is some clever temporary extension of the Phuket airport facilities, hundreds of thousands of tourists are likely to feel inconvenienced before the new terminal opens in 2014.
As it happens, it's not just Phuket airport that is experiencing daily jams. Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport was listed as the 24th best airport in the world in 2010, but it has now slipped back to No. 45. The reason?
Queues at Immigration.
The world's best airports, where you can bet there is virtually no waiting or a strategy to handle high-traffic periods: Inchon, Changhi, Hong Kong.
For the sake of Thailand's tourism industry, let's hope Phuket airport becomes a no-waiting zone sometime soon.
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Exactly as you say, I have to go through the same boring routine twice a month, often taking longer than the flight to/from Changi. Roll on low season.
Posted by Pete on February 21, 2011 08:12