During a March 8th dry run for testing the new facility, out of 100 transfer passengers (using volunteers who acted as transfer passengers) only 2 made their connecting flights. That is a 98% fail rate, so using a scale if there were 10,000 connecting passengers 9800 would miss their connections!
Airport Staff Issues
Staff had parking and security checkpoint issues (from here) – “One baggage handler said it took him 2 1/2 hours to reach
his work station because he couldn’t find a parking space and was
held up at security. When he finally got there, the handheld
device that connects each employee to the luggage system directed
him to the wrong side of the terminal, a 20-minute walk from
where he should have been.”
Baggage Issues
- Baggage system shuts down when there is a backlog. Though, it is supposed to shut down for minutes, it did overwhelm itself on the opening day. Who designed this system? What about capacity? Did they have to cut costs (out of $8.5 billion)?
- There is no storage space to accommodate backlogs
Cost of the Terminal – $8.5 billion
Fixing the facility cost - around $299 million (according to some analyst)
