Musaad Al-Osaimi

Al-Watan

 

I DO not know why the General Authority for Civil Aviation (GACA) is so angry that Jeddah airport was graded the world’s second worst.



GACA does not need to be angry and should not complain about the low rating. All that it needs to do is read what has been written in our local newspapers on the poor standards at this airport, which serves one of the biggest cities in the world and huge numbers of pilgrims and visitors each year.



I deeply wish GACA would have itself recognized the deteriorating conditions at the airport, especially in respect to the poor services and the uncouth treatment that passengers have to endure.



In all truthfulness, I would like to inform GACA that Jeddah may be the only airport in the world where you cannot be sure that your flight has been reserved, or know your arrival or departure times.



GACA's anger leads us to ask a simple question: How do you rank Jeddah airport in comparison to other airports in the Middle East? And I’m not even talking about airports elsewhere.



If GACA is able to convince us that Jeddah airport is not among the worst in the world, we will join in on the outrage in criticizing the website that gave the airport this extremely low rating. How could they? We will even go further in cursing it for this unforgivable mistake of giving the airport such a low grading.



Our problem is that we do not admit mistakes. This is why our condition remains the way it is in terms of poor performance and horrible regression in services. Despite numerous complaints, no concrete steps are taken to improve our airports.



Many people now believe that substandard performance will also be the norm at the new Jeddah airport since it is GACA which will be running it according to its normal archaic mindset along with the same employees.



I have to admit that there have been some improvements in flight arrival and departure times in Jeddah and other Saudi airports. However, there needs to be other healthy improvements in the way services are delivered and passengers treated.



There have also been some improvements in the way immigration officers deal with passengers; the ill-treatment of arriving and departing passengers does not seem to take place anymore.



I would like to tell GACA in all candidness that we care about two things. The first is that all passengers should be treated well at the airport, regardless of whether they are citizens or expatriates.



Secondly, all of our official bodies should preserve the Kingdom’s good name, especially since we have become a laughing stock as we seem to be given low ratings in everything that we do. This is very shameful indeed.



I do not believe GACA will improve by simply being in a state of denial and shirking off responsibility. We are all aware of the services we receive at the Kingdom’s airports. When we compare the services in Saudi airports to what takes place in other international airports, we may come to believe we are not in the third world, but in the fifth world.



The poor services are not a result of a lack of resources, but bureaucracy and archaic mindsets.