1
yiannis angelis 27 months ago
Air Arabia at Sharjah Airport : Erroneous Procedures – Irresponsible & Unacceptable Service - Incapable Employees
Sharjah Airport is a highly dysfunctional and badly allocated mess of systems interacting to serve the purpose of assisting individuals in reaching their destination.
On the 20th of February 2022 I was travelling with my son from Sharjah to Amman Flight No. G9 337 at 18:30. I arrived there at 15:00 and I frustratingly experienced an again chaotic situation all over the place with huge lines of people packed together hundreds of people waiting, complaining, arguing with each other and even screaming because there were to lose their flight.
From 16:00 to 18:30 I counted 10 different Air Arabia Flights, that is to 10 different destinations and to 9 different countries (Saudi Arabia, India, Kuwait, Pakistan, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Lebanon and Jordan). Now, if we assume an average of 150 passengers in each one of those 10 flights, we have a total number of 1.500 people that were about to check in, in a maximum 3 hours time window. But this is not the major mistake. The biggest blunder, was that even if there were about 10 counters operating at that time at the A (Air Arabia) check in lobby that were standing, all of them were common. That is there was a single queue in the lobby entrance (see attached picture) and it was random to which counter anyone could end.
The employees at the tables were not aware of the documentation that is sufficient and insufficient to each destination. To combat this, the airport had placed a supervisor behind all the desks with a table full of different documents on it. Almost all employees at the counters, when faced with an uncertainty about a passenger, hop off their tables and gave the supervisor the documents. Keep in mind that this person had to deal with all 10 tables. He had the documents physically and there was immense stress which lead him to make constant mistakes and spout orders to the employees on who can pass and who can't just to control the situation even slightly. In addition he was also a person that seemed to be highly inexperienced. As we were waiting, he could be seen to be taking pictures of different documents and sending it to a person via his mobile, chatting with them not even through a radio, but through voice messages, likely trying to get answers for different documentations.
Employees were seen chatting, laughing, and leaving regularly for unspecified reasons, while passengers were at risk of losing flights. The whole place was a complete chaos in terms also of hygiene and we would be lucky to not have contracted the virus.
Crowds of course also exist in the security inspection in our gate, with only 2 rows working while we were inspected, meaning again large queues. Employees were seen sitting in rows next to the 2 open ones, and observing the large sums of people murdering each other to cross, not permitting anyone to use their rows for convenience and remaining closed off in barriers. The large crowd also confuses the security officers and, due to many people trying to cross at once, there were multiple people that were not checked sufficiently or at all.
This airport obviously would be a really, really easy target and a good choice for terrorists.
I believe that this is overall an irresponsible and unacceptable service for the size and name of Air Arabia, the employees are at least incapable and I will think twice before I choose Air Arabia and Sharjah Airport again.
Finally, two days after all this experience I filled a complaint report through their web site. Even though I waited for nearly a month, nobody replied, not even a sorry, no nothing. If I could, I would rate them .. minor zero. For sure.