The New Bangalore International Airport

First time at the fancy new Bangalore airport today. Got to admit, it is quite fancy. Easily the best airport I’ve been at in India. The bus service actually works. It was an ugly bus and rattly, but it was largely empty and Rs 80 to get to an airport 40 km away: great deal! Of course I completely overestimated how long it would take to get there at 5:30 am. Next time, I’ll sleep in a little more. The approach road was actually quite nice. 3-lane highway each way. Given what I’ve seen living on Airport Road, that should be plenty. Two dead dogs just on our side of the highway, apparently dogs love to cross the road to Hyderabad. One imagines that if they complete all the landscaping work that they seem to be doing these days the approach road will end up looking rather nice.

Inside, it’s lovely. It’s not large by any means, it is surprisingly smallish, I continue to be amazed at how much air traffic gets routed through tiny airports in India. There’s plenty of natural light coming in. Needless to say, the environmentalist in me is impressed. It’s all very ordered nothing like the bus stop atmosphere of the old airport. Plenty to eat and drink. And most impressive of all: Free WiFi! Weirdly you need to send an SMS and get an “Internet access password” that is valid for an hour before you can log on. The password is free, and you can go back for a new password when the old one expires. I’m thinking this SMS wrinkle exists only because the cops told BIAL that they wanted a log of every one who logs on and what they do, and what better way than to get the users’ telephone numbers via the SMS and associate those telephone numbers with IP addresses. Also, they only allow access to the web, so you have to use Meebo to do IM, forget about VPN access or my own favourite means of access: ssh! Plenty of security counters to get X-rayed at so there’s not an unholy queue as we used to have at the old airport in the mornings. And after you get into the waiting area, there are still plenty of eateries, coffee shops and other shopping opportunities. The other nice thing is that they don’t seem to have fallen into the trap that the guys who made the Hong Kong, Bangkok, Seoul (and I think Tokyo but I’m not sure) airports fell into, i.e. make an ugly airport. All of those airports have a uniformly ugly bulgy look at the gates, the Bangalore airport has more straight lines and looks more like Singapore.

Some things never change. My flight is already delayed, and God knows when it will actually leave. The announcements on the public address system continue to have the quality of being recited by people speaking through a beehive. I don’t get why they just don’t have specially picked announcers who do the announcements for all the airlines. Maintain some quality on the announcements. The toilets are abysmal. I went into a couple and walked straight out. I’d rather hold it all in and wait for the flight which is bound to have a better toilet. The toilets in the airport are about the quality of a street side toilet in India, down to the lack of toilet paper, and unfriendly janitor who tells you to stick it because you have the gall to demand that he replenish the toilet paper supplies. Also: no electric outlets in the waiting area. You drain your own juice if you want to work while you wait.

And midway through my typing this post, my wifi died. So much for that then.