Avoid this airport if you can.
The car was searched visually on entering airport. It was a meaningless activity because anything could be hidden inside the luggage. But it created a long queue, and jobs.
My flight was from terminal 1B but there is no drop off
at 1B, only at the adjacent Terminal 1A. At one point I
was walking on the road pushing the luggage trolley towards Terminal 1B with cars inches from me.
There was a long queue at the entrance to Terminal 1B. People were waiting to pass their luggage
through security scanning. As I considered myself Priority I showed my boarding pass
to the guard who allowed me to pass. At the conveyor belt, each passenger has to manhandle his or her own luggage on and off the belt. A passenger behind me had endless pieces of
luggage which she tried to squeeze between mine. It was chaos. (Much like London Heathrow terminal 5 Priority check in).
The check in at British Airways was efficient. The check in desk explained that the BA lounge was a temporary one at gate 10. A permanent one has not been rebuilt since the fire in 2013.
Then immigration. Finger prints on exit!? That's a first. Then to gate 10, bypassing all the tourist tack. It was 22:00 and I was tired after a day's work, a 2-hour drive to the airport, and the hassle of getting myself to gate 10. At gate 10, there was a second security check on hand luggage. Absolutely no smiles. Immediately afterwards, BA mounted their own security check. Three security checks, surely this is overkill.
Into the BA lounge which was no more than a cafe circa 1970. The bottled water in the fridge was warm. There were some sandwiches and crisps, neither of which interested me. There were also alcoholic beverages including the local Tusker beer. The wifi was useless - I could not get on line. The wifi password was taped to a
window and one needed a pair of binoculars to see it. Shame on BA. The chair arrangements in the lounge were such that free flow of foot traffic was not intended.
Four Englishmen same to sit beside me, swigging beer. They talked loudly and from their conversation, they were expatriates returning to UK for home leave.
A family came with two kids and one of them was screaming his head off, non stop. I wondered where his energy came from. Both parents made no attempt to stop the howling, maybe they too were tired out by the travelling, and the screaming.
Finally the boarding took place - no announcement, just the seasoned travellers getting up from their seats and walking to the departure gate. A woman called my name and gave me a ticket stub that showed that BA had upgraded me.
Then back to civilization.
The thought of having to go through this again filled me with despair. It was a joyless experience.
