Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

On March 5th I got to experience the Memphis international arrivals. I can say for certain that based on the size of the MEM field inspection station that IND seriously blew the design of the station here. MEM was designed with twice as many inspection stations as IND. On my arrival approximately 8 of the 12 stations were open. I was on the NW A330 from AMS. That flight was very light. There were approximately 100 people on board. The passenger processing was slow. The biggest bottleneck was passport control. There was just too much standing and waiting for 100 people in the 8 lines. Imagine a full A330 with 6 lines. It won't work. IND designers really handcuffed us by designing this international arrivals mess. The best we are ever going to do with what we were given is the A320 that we see to CUN right now. I'm sorry but 400 passengers and hour is simply unacceptable. From a customer service standpoint taking 40 minutes to process a jet load of people is just sad. Anything less than 12 checkpoints says you aren't serious about customer service or really serious about getting long haul service. Yes I am sure it is better than the old system but there really is no excuse for this poor of a design in a brand new construction. This goes along with the poorly designed traffic flow through parking and passenger pickup/drop off.