Kudos to JKIA, operations are back to full capacity

By FERDINAND MWONGELA

With the cold all over the country, one would be forgiven for imagining the country is covered with one massive wet blanket. Small wonder, then, that a following the JKIA fire tragedy jokes to do with fire were abound. For instance, it was said that some chap trying to keep warm using a jiko at JKIA was to blame for that small fire — a tragedy that saw son of Jomo abandon his schedule to arrive at the scene with what looked like the good old savco jeans.

Anyway, who would have blamed anyone for lighting up a jiko to keep warm? It is not like airports are the friendliest of places, anyway. As always, they are cold, impersonal and designed to frustrate travellers, perhaps. I always suspect some evil minded chap must have woken up one day with a king-sized hangover, and designed a blueprint which virtually all airports around the world — the sleekest of them all included — strictly adhere to make the places have that feel.

Bus stations are better in the sense that they are not that boring. For instance, there is always some very enterprising chaps selling groundnuts at a corner, or a smart hawker selling everything from biscuits to sewing needles. Contrast that with airports where it is yourself and your luggage and in some cases your own luggage chooses to ignore you and gets on a wrong plane. And again, nothing makes an individual scream blue murder like running to the opposite side of an airport, while their flight is on the other. Luckily, the same cannot be said of JKIA, even at its peak, before that pesky fire you could somehow find your way around unaided.

I mean, at times, you could easily tell where you were going using the queues of people waiting to use toilets along the building.

Yet, I bet concerned authorities really wished our other airports could be used as alternatives. Unfortunately, that was not possible we had to use neighbouring countries. JKIA is generally better apart from the cab drivers who when you emerged from international arrivals, they hike fair, never mind you used the same cab at a quarter the price days earlier.

Anyone who has been to our other smaller airports or better still in other countries across East African would appreciate that indeed JKIA is way much better. It is not Heathrow but it tries its best, the speed with which they have resumed full capacity is anything to go by. Forget the congestions in corridors of people waiting for their flights. In all fairness, the Kenya Airports Authority got up and dusted itself pretty quickly, or so I think.