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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 July 1999 Issue No. 439 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 July 1999 Issue No. 439
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Focus Interview Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Airing grievances
By Salama Ahmed Salama
Coming home after any absence is a joy like no other. A tourist or a businessman may feel the same elation, but only if the first impression and the first interaction with the country of arrival or destination dissipates the sense of alienation. A foreigner arriving at Cairo International Airport could easily be put off by the general lethargic attitude. The same applies to an Egyptian who may find his arrival a more trying experience than his departure.
High-ranking officials probably have no notion of airport hardship. The VIP lounge is normally open to accommodate distinguished travellers, along with the friends and relatives come to bid them farewell or welcome them home. Important travellers may also find themselves comfortably transported to or from the door of the aircraft.
Such matters seem commonplace in backward countries and countries under totalitarian regimes. A few citizens may happen to know someone who can facilitate their passage from the arrival gate to the exit. But Cairo "International" Airport, which was conceived and constructed at a time when Egypt was somewhat isolated, and passengers travelling from Cairo were in the hundreds, with far fewer tourist arrivals than today, has not stepped up its capacity or upgraded its management techniques, despite certain expansions here and there, like the "new airport" and its annexes (basically arrival and departure halls). Under such conditions, arriving in and departing from Cairo by air has become an ordeal for the majority of passengers.
I would say that, on the whole, departure is no doubt the happier of the two experiences. Arriving at the airport is fraught with hardship, which is hardly the case in other airports all over the world today. The arrival halls and other facilities are not adequately equipped to receive large numbers of passengers. If two flights happen to arrive at the same time, the commotion and tumult caused by large numbers of people hurrying in all directions renders the place more akin to a bazaar than to an international airport.
Passport control is a slow process, designed to test the most patient nerves by applying obsolete systems of control; the conveyor belts carrying the baggage are vulnerable to sporadic collapse; and baggage trolleys are dilapidated rusty iron frames with old tilted wheels, which are difficult to push and cause innumerable mishaps.
In summer, the atmosphere becomes stifling and offensive odours fill the air. The airport has no facility to supply accurate information about flights. True, there is an information office, and telephone numbers are written on a board for public use; yet no one answers most of the numbers indicated and, if someone does, it is only to provide false information. The information board is in English, for the benefit of a public half of which is illiterate. At times, a loudspeaker rattles, purportedly to alert one to the departure or arrival of some flight.
If you are destined to welcome or bid farewell to someone at the airport, you have no choice but to stand on the pavement facing the gates. Hundreds of people crowd into a small area located at the narrow entrance to the arrival and departure halls. Waiting under the scorching sun in summer or in the bitter cold of winter is par for the course.
In these petty ways is human dignity slighted, and the rights of citizens to a decent, clean waiting room, where drinking water and toilet facilities are available, routinely violated. The vast parking lot facing the airport is not exploited to yield revenue, but left at the mercy of gangs of extortionists.
In the past few days, the press has been full of the plans to develop and renovate the airport, upgrade the facilities and add new runways. There were also heated discussions about tax free shops and how best to manage them. But not a single official seemed aware of the despicable treatment meted out to the thousands of people who travel to this country by plane.
Those who would like to make Cairo Airport a truly "international" airport should remember that travellers, even if they are not VIPs, are still human beings, and should be treated as such.
