Monday, August 04, 2008

Delhi. Wost. Airport. Ever.


Since I'm still fuming over the rank ineptitude of the management responsible for Delhi airport I'll just give you the blow-by-blow account.
  1. Arrive at Delhi on flight from Chennai, de-plane and board airport bus.
  2. Drive the full length of the runway, cross end of runway, drive full length of runway in the direction from whence we came (total time about 20 mins). [During this time there were no takeoff's or landings - clearly Delhi airport personnel have not learned the skill of using a raidio to get clearance to traverse an active runway]
  3. Approach international terminal transfer desk to, well, transfer. Told to pick up luggage that I had checked all the way through to Seattle. Only airport in the world where I have had to transfer my own luggage...
  4. Picked up luggage, went back to transfer desk to be pointed (somewhat vaguely) in the direction of a bus.
  5. Exit terminal building onto ramp. No directions to follow. No one pointing the way. Many random buses from which to select. No security. I could have gone wandering off within the secure ramp area with no challenge.
  6. Found bus. Boarded. Encountered familar pattern: Drive the full length of the runway, cross end of runway, drive full length of runway in the direction from whence we came (total time about 20 mins). Correct. Back to the terminal from where I had just de-deplaned.
  7. So bottom line is that it took about an hour and a half for me to travel, with luggage, about 100 yards.
  8. And it was hot. And humid. Very, very humid.
  9. Conclude the Delhi airport authority is run by Bozo the clown and several close relatives.

Weeks Outage for BofA


Attempting to login to my online Bank of America account at 3:29am, Monday 4th August I was presented with the following message:
Online Banking is currently unavailable in your area due to scheduled system maintenance. Online Banking will become available beginning at 7:30 A.M. Eastern Time on Sunday
So I have to wait until next Sunday until I can conduct on-line banking? Nice work Bank of America...

As a long time customer I thought I'd do the right thing and send them e-mail about this mistake. Of course you can't send e-mail to Bofa unless you are logged in, hence there is no reasonable way to report problems logging into the site. Nice.