Travel Chaos: Bangkok Airport Ordered To Get Its Act Together

[mks222]

In the meantime, Suvarnabhumi Airport Director Somchai Sawasdipol, reported that the airport is handling an increasing number of passengers. The number of passengers has increased averagely by 150,000 people a day.

International passengers are accounted for 70 percent or 115,000 people. There are around 56,000 International outbound passengers daily, while international inbound passengers were recorded at 55,000 people a day, a 5.14 percent increase on a yearly basis.

Moreover, the airport in cooperation with the Royal Thai Police and the Immigration Bureau to bring 80 to 90 percent more staff to man the immigration booth.

Can anyone explain the math in these statements?

[Famespear]

It's typical Immigration/customs employee mandate. Take as much time as possible to look at a passport and make the visiting foreigner feel as uncomfortable as possible. It's true in every country I've ever visited.

[WatUp]

Just left on Sat afternoon and came back Wed night. Both in and out lines went smoothly and a bit faster than normal. I think they have made a sincere effort to fix the situation as last month I had faced the longest wait ever both in and out from BKK.

[bobl]

Haven't read all the thread but isn't it just a follow-on from all the other "swampy is congested" threads?

Wasn't the root of the problem identified early on, as 2 of the 3 immigration areas being closed for some sort of refurb? Or have I missed some new development?

Why is everybody yelling "government"? Shouldn't the anger be directed at the moron who ok'd closing 66.6% of the gates as opposed to doing it... oh.... say, 1 at a time?

[jimbeam1]

Well I am not saying the air port is lily white but

Why blame the air port. It is the government's job to hire the immigration and customs officers. If they fail to hire enough naturally there will be long delays.

I was at Bangkok Immigration on Tuesday, for 90day stamp. Five desks, only two open and the queue was begining to grow, this was 9am.

jb1

[MILT]

you are making a new airport to be the hub of travel in Southeast Asia

By the way which ones pink?

[daviddrinkell]

Sounds a lot like London's Heathrow airport.

[h5kaf]

On a recent trip into BKK I was, along with others, directed to the VIP check in desks as the main hall was completely full. It took us 10 minutes. But next to these immigration desks was another desk for 'crew' manned by a lady who made no attempt to help out. She just sat there and slept with her eyes open.

As other posters have pointed out, the officers are very slow and seem to take every opportunity to talk to another colleague close by. What could be a clearer message that we are not wanted nor liked, but hey if only we would dump our wallets and leave.

[ding]

Count the buckets coming in.

Look at the clock.

Assign labor.

Am I hired?

We were fortunate recently and had no trouble. Our local US airport was even less authoritarian, mean and rude than in years past. I miss the Don Muang days though.

We always walk past the first immigration counters and hang a left to the shorter lines at the next set of counters.

[HOOD Robin]

Every time I have gone through I find myself racing from the airplane to get to the Immigration check in booths and when I get there there is maybe 1 or 2 people working in them. The crowd starts to get bigger and bigger then you see a few Officers stroll up to the booths leaving a slug trail behind them and then proceed to start doing there job also at slug speed.

90% of them look at you like they don't want you in 'their' country and are definetly in no hurray to get you through. At the same time you look over at all the "Thai Nationals Only" booths and all the Thai's have gone through already but do you think they open it to foreigners? Not a chance in yell. Not to mention all the un-manned booths.

They just hate giving more "government" jobs out because then they will have to pay them pensions, health insurance etc.

It's such an easy issue to solve if they only gave a dam_n.

That's the problem in a nut shell. The Thai way; don't give a dame about anything except them selves. That alone is 60% of the problem.

Unfortunately nothing else than the.... TRUTH

[Sakeopete]

It could also help to let one officer checking in the queuing lines giving quick eye if arrival / departure cards are filled correctly are filled in ..... as especially some nationality's doesn't care about that , creating delays

I came through today at about 12:30 pm and they had ladies checking everyone had their cards filled out. The lines were large but moved quickly and they did open Thai passport booth to foreigners myself being one of the lucky ones. I hope they continue this trend and not go back to their old ways.

[AZBill]

No issues either coming or going last week. 15 minutes tops on both ends.

[KeyserSoze01]

All airports have peak usage times throughout the day. Airlines coordinate schedules to minimize layovers for passengers with connecting flights. The result is multiple flights arriving at nearly the same time. This overloads the system when you have several airplanes full of people all converging on immigration at the same time. At some times the queues will be completely empty and 30 minutes later there are 1000 people all trying to queue. The impact on facilities could be minimized If the AOT issued a mandate to airlines to stagger their incoming flights instead of stacking them up.

[puck2]

Thais have an extreme developed ability to cure symptoms of a disease, but not the origin or the cause.

- Paracetamol against headache

- 100 ships against floods in BKK

- water sprinklers against smoke/fires in the mountains and rice fields

- (temporarily ?) this and that in Swampy against customers complaints

Did they ever hear about:

Prevention is better than cure ???

[welbymd]

Hmmm, seems the wait and line length started being more of a problem in the last 6 weeks?

Isn't high season just about over?

Maybe the immigration process is taking longer due to a more detailed check since the Iranian escapade mid February too.

[maidu]

There aren't enough Thais who speak English well enough, who want to do that sort of job. A decent handle on English is needed to man that sort of post. Most Thai students wind up learning little English (and they're too shy to speak), for the hundreds of hours they sit in classrooms. In recent days, I tried calling TOT support on the phone. It's impossible to get anyone in that large public corporation who speaks even a speck of English. I wind up pressing 1-1-1-0 because that's the only way to get a person on the phone, and invariably it's one of dozens of Thai workers who won't speak one word of English in response to my queries in Thai and in English. Even when I ask them, in Thai, whether they or anyone there speaks English, I invariably get long strings of Thai sentences. Not one (of a dozen) people there can even say 'yes' or 'no' or 'sorry, can't help you' or 'please try ____' in English.

To me, that's the main reason Immigration booths at Suwanabum are often unmanned - it's simply because management can't find enough Thais who can speak basic English - to fill the jobs. Sure, there are other reasons: bad management, lack of creative thinking, etc, but the lack of Thais who can speak simple English (and who want that sort of job) is the biggest reason.

I travel sometimes to Burma, and I've met dirt-poor street venders there who speak better English than Thais who teach English at Universities. Same for some Akha kids who don't even have Thai citizenship (even though they and their parents were born in Thailand).

[pauljones]

It was reported in the Bangkok Post that 3 separate mafias have divided up the airport.

(Did they ever clear up the case where the police chief was locking up "shoplifters" in short time hotel, introducing them to fake lawyers and draining their ATM accounts for thousands of dollars?)

I didn't think so............

[storm2010]

The Thai airways line last month at 6am was literally 2 hours long. looked like they had plenty of staff, but just not enough booths open, The line was around 300 meters long. luckily they pulled out people whose flights were about to close and checked them in.

[pattayadingo]

It has to depend on arrival time (for those arriving, obviously) but there were plenty of helpful staff directing customers to Immigration, handing out cards and generally helping to keep things running smoothly when I came back on Wednesday morning around 8 a.m. I have to admit the female immigration officer did look surly. Then again how are immigration officers supposed to look.

Through immigration in minutes and also - for once - my luggage too was on the carousel in minutes.

[samran]

90% of them look at you like they don't want you in 'their' country and are definetly in no hurray to get you through.

If your logic was true then they wouldn't be letting you into the country to start with. If they did somehow let you in, then they'd be over staffing the immigration booths so you didn't have to hang around in Thailand a second longer than need be.

Funny how paranoia and hyperbole trump the obvious answer that immigration have a staff shortage, the airport is reaching capacity and the government are dragging their feet to fix it.

[oldthaihand99]

The Thai airways line last month at 6am was literally 2 hours long. looked like they had plenty of staff, but just not enough booths open, The line was around 300 meters long. luckily they pulled out people whose flights were about to close and checked them in.

Leaving BKK a month ago with an economy ticket there was a 200 metre lineup before one enters the area for xraying carry on bags.

I had never seen anything like this before.

I was concerned about missing my flight, but near the end of the line where i was they opened an area for aircraft personnel or something

and ushered many of us through quickly in a few minutes. I didn't see what happened to the bulk of the 200 metre lineup, although it

started moving more quickly.

When i fly business class i get to go through a special area that has never had any lineup to speak of.

[swillowbee]

Seems Thailand has a consistent history of suffering friction whenever it interfaces the international community. Not unexpected, of course, as all cultures have friction. But, the predictability and levels of agitation Thailand seems to consistently suffer seems to belie Thai problems rising to the international standards other nations achieve.

Maybe Thai leaders just don't value the benefits of the modern world so much ... are maybe happy to just be left at the back of the pack.

With all the resources at its disposal, world-class international planners, designers, contractors and operators, Suvarnabhumi is the best the Thais could produce. Compare it to any new international airport opened within the last 30 years anywhere in the world ... HK ... Changi ... Inchon ... KL ... Narita ... it compares favorably only with Manila's Aquino International ... another renown culture of corruption and incompetence.

Why can't, or don't, Thais want to be better? ... to be more? ... how am I supposed to raise my kids amongst this? ... to accept being as good as any 3rd world country can be, and that's it?

I don't get it, really. Thais could be so much more.

Edited March 24, 2012 by Scott
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[Credo]

It's a typical problem I see here. For example they will widen a road, making a nice big 4 lane road, which then converges into a two lane road, which makes for a huge traffic jam. A chain is only as strong as the weakest link.

I don't fly often, but I've experienced both short lines and long lines. Difficult to predict.

[folium]

In amongst all the bitching etc about BKK here's an up to date experience.

Flew out Mon night and there were extra booths, lots of immigration officers and senior officers overseeing proceedings. Took me exactly 6 minutes to get through using Departure gate 3.

Coming back today, arrived at about 3.20pm. First off the plane and at immigration there were exactly 3 other foreign passengers, 8 open booths and lots of greeters and guys checking that landing cards had been completed.

Maybe I was just lucky but it strikes me that they are taking it seriously and getting it sorted. No one likes losing face, so well done. I have no complaints re my most recent experiences of BKK and lots of praise.

Edited March 24, 2012 by folium