A Tale of Two Cities

When we arrived at Delhi airport, we had 2hrs 20mins until our flight to Singapore departed.

The queue at check-in was longer than ideal but not outrageous. It just wasn’t moving. It still wasn’t moving 20 mins later. It wasn’t for a lack of staff; there were about five folks at each desk – one looking important and constantly on his phone. A second, also smartly dressed was continuously arguing with a third one who kept swapping desks. The fourth was constantly peering over the shoulder of the fifth and yelling in his ear. All four seemed to be working against each other and their only unity of purpose was to prevent the fifth – the poor schmuck trying to actually check in passengers – from achieving anything at all. The fact that at least half of the passengers were totally unaware of any baggage restrictions wasn’t helping.

By the time we had checked in our bags and got our boarding cards, there was 1hr 29 minutes until the plane left.

Immigration was a total shambles. I mean, why bother at all? Everyone is on the way out of the country and about to be someone else’s problem, passports have already been examined at check-in – just wave ‘em all goodbye! Not a chance. The queue snaked around the building, with each examination taking nearly a minute.

By the time we had cleared passport control, there was 57 minutes until the plane left.

It was at security that I finally lost it with Indian bureaucracy.

At first glance, the queues here weren’t quite as long, but the process was ridiculous. Having put everything into the scanner, I cleared through the metal detector, but they wanted to frisk me anyway. Okay.

Then; “Where’s your boarding card?”

“It’s in my bag, going through the scanner”.

“Well, I need to see it”.

“What on earth for? 427 people have already seen it!!”

“You must show it to me”

“Why?? No other airport in the world asks to see a boarding pass when your luggage is being scanned!!”

“I need to see it!:

“ RIGHT! FINE! Everybody stop everything and back up the luggage belt, everybody stop the flights – this bloke needs…”

“I’ve got I for you, Here it is, here it is,” yelled S, desperately. from back in the queue waiting to come through.

“Call this a way to to run an airport?? I mean who cares that the plane leaves in less than 30 minutes and we’ve already been here two hours… and now look – all those bags coming through the scanner are backing up where no-one can reach them and what are those three blokes meant to be doing? Anything remotely useful….??”

“If you get yourself arrested,” hissed S, “I’ll never speak to you again!”

Reflecting that there might be more truth to that than she meant, I allowed her to shove me through the door out of security and into departures, but spent the five and a half hours on the flight to Singapore explaining how I could improve the whole airport experience.

As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered, because Singapore have got it all sussed! We were off the plane in record time and the queues at the immigration desk were less than five people deep. I have had many experiences at immigration but never, ever have I had an immigration guy sing to me! The chap just checking that we had everything ready noted we were Brits and burst into a rendition of “Every step you take’ by the Police (Not wholly inappropriate for Singapore, as it happens). They also had a bowl of sweets on offer at the desk!

It’s simply that Indian processes exist to create work for people whereas the Singaporeans are entirely focused on your money.

So when we got to the passport desk, the conversation was sort of like;

“Good evening, here’s my passport”

“Yeah, look don’t worry about all that – have you got your credit cards?”

“Er…yes, but…”

“And five-figure credit limits?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“Excellent! Express taxis are just outside and the Malls are open to midnight. Welcome to Singapore and have a nice shop!”

Less than 45 minutes after touch down, we were whizzing into the city centre on immaculate roads with immaculate driving. It also crossed my mind that as the airport was at the eastern tip of Singapore Island, we were now as far east as we were going to get; from now on, it would be westwards all the way – towards home!