Fly high with airport lessons from Bengaluru

  • | Tuesday | 15th October, 2019

And Bengaluru airport wins hands down when passenger comforts, besides, of course, the landscaped beauty, are concerned. A few months ago, I experienced a probable-first at Bengaluru airport, but it was unfortunately not to be seen during my visit last week. It is something, I am sure, all women travellers would welcome completely. For an always-hassled traveller like me, actually, just one amenity is enough to make the Bengaluru airport bag the prize by a huge margin – the airport cab service. This time, I also spotted a pink airport cab, with a woman driver at the wheel, meant only for female passengers.

Pallavi Srivastava By Express News Service BENGALURU: A cover may not do for a book what a pair of shoes does for a man, but I do believe that Indian metro cities can be judged quite a bit by their airports. How well those chrome-and-glass structures are managed does give quite a clear clue about the way the city functions. And Bengaluru airport wins hands down when passenger comforts, besides, of course, the landscaped beauty, are concerned. It is one of the few airports in the country where traffic is stopped by the personnel to let travellers pushing laden-with-suitcases trolleys cross the road without having to hasten their steps. The swanky T-3 terminal in Delhi still has cars zooming down the approach lane at the drop-off points, while you are left to fish out your own mechanisms to cross the road towards the building. It was also not without reason that the city airport was recently trending on the social media for having a diaper-changing station in the men’s toilet. A big contrast from my experience at Kolkata airport some time ago, where I spent 15 minutes trudging up and down the corridor, from one washroom to another, only because almost all of them were being cleaned simultaneously, and the attendants wouldn’t let you even enter the area. I even got an earful from one of them, who, when I pointed at a cubicle that had been cleaned, almost yelled at me, ‘It’s for people like you that we are working this late at night’. I finally got to use one, thanks to a foreign traveller who they didn’t have the nerve to stop. Ashamed as I am to admit it, this was the one time I was happy to overlook the subservient attitude most Indians tend to show towards white skin. A few months ago, I experienced a probable-first at Bengaluru airport, but it was unfortunately not to be seen during my visit last week. It was quite interesting to find only female security personnel ‘manning’ the entire security check-in process for women passengers. It is something, I am sure, all women travellers would welcome completely. Not many of us, after all, find it comfortable when we have to open our bags and show the contents to stranger men, well-meaning and essential though the drill may be. For an always-hassled traveller like me, actually, just one amenity is enough to make the Bengaluru airport bag the prize by a huge margin – the airport cab service. No need for you to take care of the pre-paid receipt while also looking after the luggage and the kids, or surveying the taxi number plates for the one assigned to you. So what if this time, I had to stand in a serpentine queue for 20 minutes, the fact that the lanes were marked with tapes at midnight, when five flights had landed, showed the preparation made in anticipation of the hundreds of travellers trooping out of the terminal together. This time, I also spotted a pink airport cab, with a woman driver at the wheel, meant only for female passengers. And as a couple was politely asked to proceed towards another vehicle while a single woman traveller was ushered into the pink-and-white car, it was clear that other Indian cities really have a lot of catching up to do.

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