Originally Posted by
Caravaggio
Just come through the non existent traffic congestion outside terminal 3.
Congestion is a fact of everyday life in T3 - but it is self-inflicted by the airport management - IMO in order to justify this money grabbing scheme.
Over recent years they have slowly but surely closed off a number of drop off / pick up points for no apparent reason (although we now know why) to the point where the available space is minuscule. This forces people who are committing the outrageous acts of wanting to drop off or meet their friends or loved ones to continually go round the loop at 5 miles an hour, causing the rest of the road network to back up and affect the other terminals. If people turned up, dropped off / picked up and were gone in a single move, the congestion would be significantly less. No money to be had from that though....
In the case of T1 Level 5 drop off this has been abused for some time by taxi drivers who instruct their pax to meet them there on return - turning it into an informal pick-up zone. Again easily fixed: one of the marshals would simply move on anyone who enters the zone as a single occupant of a vehicle....but I guess there's no money to be made in that either.
The airport company should just be honest and say they're out to pick the pockets of their customers.....just like the airlines. The whole aviation business is a nest of vipers run by a nasty bunch of conniving charlatans.
My wife and I met with some friends at the weekend and discussed doing one of our frequent city breaks and inevitably this subject arose. The general consensus is one of 'straw that broke the camel's back' . The whole airport experience is so utterly miserable it is now to be avoided where ever possible. We decided to go to Bath instead of Seville. That's 6 of us both ways - 12 pax lost off the list for this year. We won't be the only ones.
Any business that treats its customers with such contempt.......