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from: Daniel Gross

The Glorious Airports of Southeast Asia

Posted Saturday, Dec. 1, 2007, at 6:43 AM ET
Shrimp-fried rice udon noodles. Click image to expand.

In the developing world, urban life is a Hieronymus Bosch-like vision of tangled traffic, crumbling infrastructure, overcrowding, and crippling economic inefficiencies. The population of Vietnam is 85 million souls, of which roughly 84.7 million are driving motorbikes through the center of Ho Chi Minh City right now. In Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the streets leading down to the picturesque Mekong River waterfront are lined with uncollected garbage.

But the airports—ah, the airports—in these poor countries are First World havens, oases of cleanliness, serenity, and order. The Unit­ed States, the wealthiest nation on earth, presents the flip side of this paradox. Outside the airports, it's a model of calm and prosperity. But step inside, and conditions instantly degenerate. Citizens queue in interminable lines and suffer humiliating treatment at the hands of surly authori­ties. In the first nine months of 2007, only 73.2 percent of flights at the top 32 U.S. airports arrived on time, and one of every 138 checked bags was misplaced, according to the government. Last month your columnist passed through five domestic airports and four in Asia, where I partici­pated in a German Marshall Fund economic journal­ism fellowship. The great irony? Flying in the world's wealthiest nation is a far less civilized and dignified experience than traveling by air in some of the world's poorest countries.

American airports have become ­modern-day Thunderdomes. Faced with the prospects of entering terrifying gauntlets, travelers take evasive action—packing a single suit for a five-day business trip, flying out of satellite airports, booking 6 a.m. flights. But even those who buy first-class tickets can't avoid the manifold indignities: the forced removal of shoes, the confiscation of aerosol deodorant, and countless hours spent stewing on runways.

By contrast, at the airports in South Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia that I passed through, lines moved quickly, and belts and shoes remained firmly on. Not a single bottle of saline solution was confiscated. And no 6-year-old was pulled aside for further scrutiny. The flights generally left on time, unhampered by the runway traf­fic jams so common at LAX. At Seoul's Incheon International Airport, which opened in March 2001 and handles about 26 million passengers a year, the glamour of interna­tional travel still reigns. It's like one of those highly amenitized condo developments languishing on the market in Florida, chockablock with high-end retail outlets like Ferragamo, Chanel, and Burberry.

The airport's transit hotel offers weary visitors a clean, modern, small room. The price: $36 for four hours. And the food? No contest. When I was stuck for a few hours last month in Charleston, S.C., an area known for its cuisine, the only provisions on offer were a hot dog and a single Caesar salad. Incheon air­port has no Cinnabons. But its food courts dish up hearty udon noodles and shrimp fried rice. At the bar in Hanoi's Noi Bai air­port, travelers noshed on meat steamed in banana leaves and salty banana chips.

There's a degree to which this First World-Third World conundrum makes sense. Crowded U.S. airports are a curse of prosperity. So many Americans can afford to fly, and the industry has developed to such an extent, that air travel is a form of mass tran­sit. (On the flight I took to Charleston, a guy clomped down the aisle and charmingly instructed me to "move your shit" before loudly plunking his tattooed body down.) In the first eight months of 2007, U.S. airlines carried 522.8 million passen­gers. But in impoverished Southeast Asia, flying remains a pipe dream for the overwhelming majority of residents. Noi Bai airport in all of 2006 saw about 3.5 mil­lion passengers, about the same number that passed through Atlanta's Hartsfield airport in August 2007.

The gap in wages between the United States and Asia also contributes to the difference in experience. At Phnom Penh International, I clocked the time it took to deplane, apply for a visa, get my luggage, and go through customs: eight minutes. The 13 employees who speedily processed my passport through a bureau­cratic assembly line were just part of the abnormally large (3,500-strong) work force for this small airport. In the United States, where labor is considerably more expensive, airports are chronically under­staffed. In fact, the ratio of passengers to full-time airline employees rose from about 60-to-1 in 2001 to more than 90-to-1 in 2006, as the New York Times recently reported. Upon arriving at Kennedy, I had to wait a good 20 minutes at passport control because there were only nine agents on duty.

Asian airports also highlight another dichotomy of the global economy. Coun­tries that never had pervasive landline telephone systems frequently enjoy better wireless telephone coverage than here. Just so, Cambodia and Vietnam are only now getting around to building their aviation infrastructures, but they're purchasing state-of-the-art products rather than up­dating legacy systems.

You're more likely to find brand-new jets on rapidly expand­ing carriers like Asiana and Vietnam Airlines than on US Airways. To be sure, investments in U.S. air-traffic control and airports are long over­due. But the short-term miseries of the American flier are a function of our na­tion's long-term success. Given the choice of the hassle-free air travel combined with the hassle-filled life of the Cambodian and Vietnamese peoples—to whom the second half of the last century was so cruel—I'll choose the surly TSA guard and the three-hour wait at La Guardia.

moneybox
entries
1234
from: Daniel Gross

The Glorious Airports of Southeast Asia

Posted Saturday, Dec. 1, 2007, at 6:43 AM ET
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Daniel Gross traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia last month as part of a German Marshall Fund economic journalism fellowship.
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Comments from the Fray

Prosperity and crowding doesn't explain the US's wretched airports: a lack of imagination does. While in developing countries a spiffy airport is a source of pride, many US cities seemed to have devoted zero thought to making their airports comfortable or pleasant for travelers, beautiful, inspiring or calming; or even, in most cases, with good transit options. Many equally prosperous and busy European airports do far better. Schiphol, for example. Plus, changes don't necessarily cost money. Why don't airports have zones where you can sit in quiet away from TVs or talk on a cell phone? Why don't airports have more tables for people to work at while they're waiting? More outlets? Why is it so hard to find out what time it is in an airport?

--haiku rd

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Of course Incheon is a breeze to get through, and clean, and all that. It's intended for people leaving or entering the country - as such, the government takes great pains to make it sparkle. But to compare it to Charleston? It's apples and oranges. Had Gross wanted to do a fair and more accurate comparison, he would have bebopped from Incheon down the road to the old, and now domestic, airport in Seoul--Gimpo. There he would have seen what air travel in Korea is all about--lousy scheduling, a seemingly pathological inability to queue, decaying buildings, scary toilets, and nothing but lousy ramen noodles to eat.

--tahall 62

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But Daniel, why is the choice TSA imbecility and incompetent baggage-handling or Cambodian non-aviation chaos? Why can't we have BOTH the decent, civil, fast service and comfort available in SE Asia AND everything else on the outside of the US terminal (except the traffic, you forgot to mention the hassles of trying to get to the terminals.. Dan, think of Newark, think of BWI, think of Kennedy!)? It's not just a matter of scale either, that makes airports in out of the way jungles (Enough. You people who say "there is no such thing as a jungle" have NOT been to Cambodia or Vietnam. Jungles do exist. They are real. Go see for yourself.) decent places to transit. Beijing's airport is a really, really busy place--but the lines at Immigration move pretty quickly--I one time counted thirty people checking passports, and unlike the US, when the lines in Beijing start getting a bit long-- they open up more stations to help make things move more quickly! And I routinely wait longer for my bags at PWM in Maine, despite the proximity of the plane to the baggage area, than I do in Beijing.

No, Daniel, you shouldn't be thinking, "Yes, this is a reasonable trade off." You should be thinking, "If they can have this we can too."

--ihatethenewlogin

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