Chaos at Karachi airport

KARACHI: As our plane landed at Karachi airport on November 9 at 10.30pm, (on an Airblue flight) and I set foot on the runway, an unbelievable scene met my eyes. The entire airport was in chaos, the reason, quite simple: a Hajj flight had landed on the general flight terminal. As a result, hundreds of passengers tried to negotiate their way to the airport exit, hampered by congestion and chaos.

However, as I later witnessed, the landing fiasco was just the tip of the iceberg. As I moved towards the terminal’s parking lot, the ugly sight of garbage, strewn all over the airport, met my eyes. While the hygienic conditions at the airport are unsatisfactory, even on the best of days, but on that particular day, it was worse than usual. The situation worsened as I made my way to the gates, where I found to my dismay, that not only had the cars been parked in as many as three pick-up lanes together, all the traffic had converged on gates two, three, four and five. As a result, it would take eons before the cars could finally exit the airport. Moreover, the traffic authorities were nowhere to be seen.

It took me one and a half hours to exit the airport; imagine how much time has been wasted of hundreds and thousands of passengers. Imagine, what impact this unseemly sight would have on the hundreds and thousands of foreign nationals who enter and exit our country every day? There can be no doubt that the blame for the entire situation lies with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) alone. I wrote them an official letter of complaint, but it fell on deaf ears. I hope I have made my point. I look forward to the CAA’s reply. In addition, I would also like to know, what actions does the CAA intend to take to put things right at our airport, and when?

M Naeem Qureshi

National Forum for Environmental Health

Published in The Express Tribune, November 25^th, 2013.

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