Dealing with queues

Inspite of the growing crowd, only 2 counters were opened!

It would be nice if more counters were opened 

Passengers patiently queuing up

A few weeks ago, my family and I visited Sydney. As some of you know, Sydney will be our new home this coming December. For this particular trip, we took Malaysia Airlines (MAS), our national carrier. I must say it has been years since I flew with MAS. With so many airlines to choose from, consumers tend to have an upper hand here. For me and my family, it is purely economics. We will fly with whichever airline that can give us the best deal. It so happened that MAS has got the best deal, so MAS it was.

When we arrived in KLIA, we found ourselves in a sea of crowd. You see, MAS has got a common check-in counter. Unlike Air Asia, where you go to the specific counter (based on your destination) for check-in, everyone has to queue in a common line in order to check-in with MAS. What made it even more challenging was there were only 2 counters opened at that time. I thought they would open more counters to cater the growing crowd. It took us close to an hour before we could checked in and that was after MAS decided to open a couple more counters. However, I must add that the counter lady was very polite and patient. Even though she was a ground staff, she definitely represented MAS in a positive light, a lady with the “golden smile”.

The plane that took us to Sydney was a Boeing 747-400 or commonly known as a “jumbo jet” which at one time was the prime airship. I have not flown in a Boeing 747-400 for ages, so can you imagine when we took our seats. The seat I was assigned to was wobbly and you could see that the plane had aged quite a bit. However, to make up for that rather unfortunate experience, again I must say that the cabin crew (though most of them were fairly mature which in my opinion was a good thing) had provided “golden service” throughout the flight. 

When we arrived in Sydney International Airport at about 8.00am Sydney time, we were once again faced with large crowd of people queueing up at the Immigration Counters. It was time like this that many of the foreigners in the queue wished they were holding Australian passports! The line at the Immigration Counter for Australian passport holders was a breeze. Inspite of the long queue, I was rather surprised that the line moved rather quickly. From my observation, it took an average of less than 2 minutes to check and stamped the foreign passenger’s passport PROVIDED that the passenger does not chat and crack silly jokes with the Immigration officers. How did the Immigration deal so quickly with the queue? Simple! Open more counters. As a matter a fact, at one time, the Counter that was handling Australian passport holders even chipped in to deal with the increasing foreign passengers.

Personally, I think our national carrier, MAS should spent a little bit of time to find effective methods to deal with long queues. Passengers would love to have something wonderful to remember about their trips and it wouldn’t be pleasant if all they remembered were waiting and queueing and waiting and queueing.............