New Athens airport descends into chaos

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New Athens airport descends into chaos

Michael Howard in Athens Monday April 2, 2001 The Guardian

It was hailed as "the most extensively tested airport in the history of aviation": a bright shiny symbol of progress for the host city of the 2004 Olympic Games.

But for the thousands flying in and out of Athens at the weekend the new Eleftherios Venizelos international airport, named after Greece's most revered 20th-century statesman, quickly became a nightmare of lost luggage, bewildering delays and technical meltdown.

The ailing state-owned Olympic Airways cancelled 46 flights on Saturday and a further 34 yesterday as the "state-of-the-art" airport, built by Germans at the cost of £1.4bn and opened to a great fanfare last week, struggled to cope with the demand.

Everything that could go wrong, did - from the malfunctioning check-in system to the glitch-prone flight information board.

Thousands of pieces of luggage were reported lost. Many Olympic Airways tickets listed departures gates for the old Athens airport, on the coast at Hellenikon, which closed three days earlier.

To make matters worse, traffic ground to a halt outside the terminal as thousands of Athenians drove the 18 miles east to the airport, at Spata, for a spot of sightseeing.

Beleaguered officials blamed the staff's lack of familiarity with the new airport's computer systems and the failure to install enough high-speed phone lines.

Air traffic controllers were also reported to be having problems with the new electronic equipment.

As the delays grew worse, arguments broke out among the exasperated passengers.

"It's complete chaos in there," an American tourist said, leaving the terminal three hours after his plane touched down.

"Everyone's shouting, and the staff seem to know as little about what is going on as the passengers."

Christos Verelis, the transport minister, promised that the problems would be swiftly resolved.

The teething problems are an embarrassment to the reformist Socialist government of Costas Simitis.

The airport is a key part of the programme to improve the transport infrastructure for the Olympics: it helped to persuade doubting International Olympic Committee officials that Greece was serious in its bid to stage the Games.

Critics said yesterday that the government, worried about missing yet more deadlines, had rushed the airport into service before everything, including the staff, was really ready, despite the terminal having been finished last October.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4163360,00.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 02, 2001


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