مطار الخرطوم...... واجهة الوطن........ ما هى إنطباعات الأجانب عنه!!!

Quote: With the possible exceptions of South African Airways and Kenya Airways, hardly a single airline comes up to acceptable standards. Many of Africa’s airports are so terrible that you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Every airport in the developed world tries to streamline check-in, security and immigration procedures. But African airports do the exact opposite. Everything is duplicated and multiplied. The worst I have encountered is Khartoum airport. There is a queue just to get through the front door because that’s where the first security check is. Then you queue to pay your airport tax. Then you queue to check in and deposit your bag. Then you queue for immigration. Then you queue to collect your bag (which you checked in earlier) and give it to the customs men (requiring another queue). Then you queue for a second security check. Finally you queue for the bus which takes you to your plane (this queue is created because, in a final twist, someone checks your passport and ticket at the door of the bus, just in case you might have got this far without them). Thus Khartoum airport manages to create eight queues and eight different stages to board a plane. Incidentally, you go through all this between 2am and 3am because, for reasons I cannot fathom, all international flights leave Sudan at about 4am. Why are African airports like this? The only plausible reason is that airports are used as job creation schemes. For example, in every developed country, tax is added on to the price of your air ticket, so there is no need to queue and pay at the airport. But in Khartoum and many other African airports, a few people are employed (quite unnecessarily) to collect the tax. So thousands of passengers are mildly inconvenienced, but those people have jobs and their children go to school. In Johannesburg International Airport, supposedly one of the better ones in Africa, you must queue to have your bag weighed on a set of scales before you reach the check-in desk (where the bag is weighed again). At peak times, this completely unnecessary requirement creates queues stretching half-way down the terminal building. But the people who do the weighing have jobs when they might otherwise be unemployed. In other words, African airports are run for the convenience of their employees, not the passengers.