AS THE government enters the final stages of negotiations for a strategic investor to build a new airport and take over the operation of the existing ones, the annual summer chaos appears to have begun at Larnaca.
Increasingly, Larnaca airport is proving inadequate for the number of tourists, over two million, that annually visit the island, and although the government did spend some £20 million to improve it over recent years, it remains unable to cope when a number of flights arrive at the same time.
It also looks as if it may be a hot frustrating summer for arriving and departing travellers. The new operator, if the government signs a deal with Hermes consortium, will not take over operation until around October.
The government, in the meantime does not want to invest any more money, sources in the industry say.
Reports yesterday described chaos at Larnaca Airport on Sunday when a number of flights arrived at the same time. According to Phileleftheros, only one of the two baggage carousels in the arrivals area was working.
One flight came in from Eastern Europe and its baggage was put on the carousel, but the passengers were delayed in long visa queues at the immigration desks.
In the meantime, flights arrived from the UK, whose EU citizens were speeded through immigration only to find that the bags from the previous flight were still turning around and theirs could not be offloaded.
Ultimately all the luggage from the first flight had to be taken off by airport workers to allow the other bags to be unloaded. This also blocked other arriving flights and later jammed the car park.
Sources in the travel industry at the airport told the Cyprus Mail it was “the same old story”
“It’s an airport that doesn’t function,” one source said, adding that even in the departure area there were problems with the conveyor belts. “It can only work with a certain capacity and you can’t load as many bags as required and so it slows down the procedure,” said the source.
“Then at the arrival hall, especially on Sundays, you can have five or six flights arriving together. Sunday is a difficult enough day, but when it comes to July and August it’s even harder.”
Airlines and tour operators have been complaining for years over the inadequacy of the airport, but they are the ones in the direct line of passenger anger, so they are the ones that get blamed, the source said.
“Some things have got better and others left as they were,” said the source. “They don’t want to spend the money.”
However, Civil Aviation Director Iacovos Demetriou blamed the problem on flight delays from abroad.
“We are taking measures and employing more workers for the operation of the airport,” he told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.
“We fix our capacity and say we are going to accommodate up to 14 flights per hour,” he said.
“But things in the world of air transport do not always happen the way we want them to happen because some delays from UK to Larnaca brings the aircraft in another period, which already has 14 flights so there is some congestion. This is a problem facing all the airports in the world. We wish the aircraft would come when they are supposed to come.”
Demetriou said his department took all the measures to alleviate the problem and that more people would be employed for the summer months “to make life more comfortable” for passengers.
