Monday, October 20, 2014

Air Passengers Get ‘Wet’ Welcome

Chennai: When the rain pounded the city over the weekend, passengers who arrived by air didn’t have to wait to exit the airport to be accorded a ‘wet’ welcome; they got that while pulling their bags off the conveyor belt. Several pieces of baggage that were taken from planes, tugged to the terminal and put on to the conveyor belts arrived soaked — testing the waterproof guarantee that most suitcase salesmen swear by.

“I was hoping to get to the parking lot and convince the prepaid taxi driver to swing close to the lane, so that the bag that had packets of expensive cashew nuts was safe,” explains T S Priyamvadha, a mother of a 23-year-old techie who currently works in Hyderabad. “But when the bag came off the conveyor belt, it was soaked almost like it had been sitting in the rain,” she adds disconsolately. Her cashew stash was safe thanks to the plastic casing it was in, but her laptop is acting up after being wet ‘in transit’. She placed a complaint with the airline counter, but doesn’t believe there will be any response.

Several others have been puzzled by this phenomenon of bags being wet, despite being carted in covered baggage trolleys. Producer Mukesh Mehta, who had faced a similar issue tweeted, “Chennai Airport has no facility to ensure that passenger bags Do Not get wet during rains when sent to and brought from aircrafts be careful.”
20/10/14 New Indian Express
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