murtaza12
First landing experience at IIAP:
After enjoying a 2-week long vacation, I returned to ISB this morning (13th July 2018) on EK-612.
Landing: It had rained just before my flight landed, and many flights were diverted to LHE and then returned to ISB after some time. Thankfully, EK was not diverted, and we landed safely at 7:40 AM. Runway was damp, and there were puddles on the tarmac, nice to see PIA and Qatar B777s, along with Turkish A330. I wish there were more widebodies, anyway, landing was fine, quickly taxied to the gate within 5 minutes as well.
Getting off the aircraft: I wanted to laugh, there was what looked like a monkey in a CAA uniform trying to operate the ADELTE Passenger Boarding bridge (PBB). I could see out my seat window that the guy operating it clearly had no idea what he was doing. He kept moving it side to side, up and down, couldn't keep it stable or align it properly with the aircraft door. Not even lying, all the passengers were standing up inside because the doors hadn't opened yet since that idiot couldn't even align the PBB. What a shame.
I haven't been to LHE/KHI recently, but is it the same there?
Immigration:
Getting off the aircraft was straight forward, you walk through the PBB, one CAA member is guiding passengers to immediately take a left towards arrivals.
Eventually you get to the immigration counters, it's a huge hall, impressed with the size, and the orderly fashion in which people were standing in lines. However, it's no different than BBIA in terms of capacity. What's the point of showing off this many counters when 7 of them were closed due to lack of staff to operate them?
Note: I had made friends with a member of airport security in old ISB airport, and he was not here personally today, but he had one of his colleagues help me out with baggage etc. While waiting in immigration line, he said that the airport is still a mess, even 2 months after opening. Breakdowns in the check-in system for airlines is a daily occurrence, along with the constant failure of baggage carousels.
I was happy to hear that out of all foreign carriers, EK was performing the best, despite the hurdle I faced when leaving ISB. QR, EY and TK are having issues with check-in and baggage offloading.
He also mentioned that both EK and Dnata staff were dreading the commercial launch of A380 flights to/from ISB, they are barely able to cope with the load of 350-400 pax, how will they deal with 600? This is probably why the first flight has been pushed from 20th July to 10th August.
Baggage claim:
It was baggage carousel 2, I waited for around 10 minutes, and all I could see spinning on and on, were bags for Turkish Airlines passengers, since it had arrived late, the bags were being sent the same time as EK. TK bags finished finally and my bags started coming, for the first time in my entire life of arriving in Pakistan, priority baggage was actually given some priority.
Parking/Arrivals:
Considering QR, TK and EK had just arrived in quick succession, the arrivals area was packed with people.
I remember someone mentioning there was only one elevator to get to the parking area above, well there is, but I didn't use it. There is a sloped moving walkway, so I put the luggage trolley on that, and took it up to my car.
Unfortunately didn't get any pictures, was too tired from being up all night for this flight. The timings are ridiculous.