Cape Town International Airport has been voted best airport in Africa by the Airports Council International (ACI). OR Tambo came a surprising third after Cairo’s airport, and sleepy little George came out top among airports with fewer than 2 million passengers.
South Korea’s Seoul Incheon Airport was voted best worldwide.
According to the ACI, which measures passenger experiences from arrival to departure, the criteria are service, service and service.
Ja well, no fine. I must be just plumb unlucky and obviously always travel on the days that ACI is off duty. Recently at New York’s JFK airport, after being stripped of my belt, boots, jacket, scarf and watch while being herded through security, I realised I had lost my watch. “No, lady,” I was told ungraciously by a burly security official, “You sure can’t go back and look for it. You’d be a security risk.”
Me – pensioner, grandmother, and former Queen’s Guide – a security risk? I adopted my personal surefire strategy for dealing with airport officials and went into passenger service mode. I grovelled, bleated, whined and cajoled. He let me go back and search for the watch and there it was on the floor under the search table. I stuffed it in my pocket and ran for the plane.
An hour or so later, somewhere over the Atlantic, I pulled the watch from my pocket. It wasn’t mine. I had scored a classy Swiss Army watch and somebody else had the R100 watch I’d bought from a chemist’s shop in Lydenburg.
On another occasion I demanded a receipt for a visa from an immigration official in Tanzania. Wrong move. He didn’t have a pen, he’d lost his book of receipts, it didn’t matter, I didn’t need one, just go. Alas, my Girl Guide principles kicked in. “I need a receipt.”
An hour and a lot of unpleasantness later I got one, and maybe the money went into the government’s coffers instead of his pocket.
But on the whole my passenger service philosophy is that it’s better and safer for the passenger to give good service to whomsoever they encounter. I call it the philosophy of obscene sycophancy and it always works. Ingratiate yourself, smile (just grimace if you can’t manage a smile), lower your head and look subservient and grateful to these wonderful people who are doing everything they can to make your journey as miserable as possible.
So remember: passenger service mode. It’s so effective that once I talked my way onto a flight from Belfast to London with hand luggage consisting of two elephant tusks in a kitbag.
But then, the Irish do have a sense of humour. - Sunday Independent