General: Queen Alia Intl airport, situated about 30 kms from the city of Amman, Jordan is a small and clean airport. Small enough that walking from any gate to any other gate at normal pace will not take you more than 5 minutes. And the airport is mostly kept squeaky clean, with plenty of cleaning staff available and doing their duty (well, almost - there was an evident lack of toilet paper in the men’s bathrooms). The building is also architected and decorated very well.
Facilities: Although the airport is divided into a south terminal and a north terminal, its all in one big building, with the airport duty free shop separating the two ’’logical’’ terminals. The terminals have 6 gates each. The duty free shop is pretty good with lots of the usual duty-free items available. And they accept both Jordanian Dinar as well as US Dollars, as do most other shops/restaurants in the terminal. There are a couple of fast food restaurants, such as Pizza Hut and Popeye’s, a deli, and a few proper dine-in restaurants as well.
There are not too many TV monitors around the airport providing flight information, but there are a few in strategic locations. Some display the information in Arabic and some in English. But all announcements are made in both Arabic and English, and are clear and easy to understand.
Security: Security at the entrance to the airport is incredibly strict. They not only made me take off my watch and ring, but even my glasses(!) before going through the metal detectors. In addition to security at the airport entrance, you also have to go through a metal detector before you go from the lounge into the gate area, even if you never exited the airport. I suppose, in the current tense atmosphere in the middle east, this is a good thing, even if its annoying. It did make me feel quite safe.
All right, so much for the good things. Now come the bad things!
Language: Most people in the airport do not seem to speak English. Yes, Jordan is an Arab country, so most people would speak Arabic. However, it has a lot of american influence and lot of people in the country speak English. So, you would expect the employees in an international airport, at least the high ranking employees, if not the janitors, to be able to converse with foreigners in English. No such luck.
Smoke-free: The airport claims to be a smoke-free facility. There are signs to that effect all over the airport, and frequent announcements are also made. However, exactly below one of these signs sat an airport official, smoking away to glory. And he was not the only one whom I saw doing that.
Long layovers?: If you have 3-4 hours to kill at the airport, you might not have any problems, but if your flight gets delayed or you have a long wait, God help you! For one, other than loitering in the duty-free shop, there is nothing else to do in the airport. And second, if the airline decides to provide you with food while you wait, they do so at Pizza Hut or Popeyes, and you are stuck in a queue of 300 odd people to go get your meal!
Staff: Now comes the clincher. The people at the airport. Getting a smile from they is like asking for water in a desert. They have got to be the most rude and arrogant set of people I have ever come across in an airport (umm, ok, except for New York airports, I guess!). Right from the airline officials to the immigration counter clerk to the security guards. If you don’t speak Arabic (and don’t have a white skin), you are basically scum. Here are a couple of examples - you make your own judgement:
1. I had to stay overnight in Amman while in transit. At the immigration counter, if you do not hold an american passport, they will keep your passport overnight and return it to you next day when you come back to board your connecting flight. Since, this was the first time I had to stay overnight during transit, I was not aware of this. But they never cared to explain this. The immigration official put my passport in his drawer and told me to ’’go’’!! No explanations. Fortunately, my fellow travellers had experience with this so they advised me on what was happening.
2. My 5 year old daughter was running high fever and could barely walk. I was carrying her in one arm and dragging my carry-on baggage with the other. At the security checkpoint, the guard curtly pointed at the women’s queue and indicated that my daughter has to go there! I tried to explain that she is sick and unable to walk. And she is only 5 years old, so does not really need to go into the secluded women’s checkpoint. Ha! I might have as well been talking to a stone. All I got was a finger pointing at the women’s checkpoint and a few harsh sounding words in Arabic. So, I took my daughter to the women’s checkpoint, where there was no other woman waiting to go through security. They could have easily let me carry my daughter through. But no, I was a man so I could not enter that checkpoint. They made my sick 5 year old bawling daughter walk through the security booth (closed from all sides) all alone, where she could not see any familiar face, only a cold strange woman frisking her curtly. Talk about inhuman treatment! What a contrast it was to arrive into US and have every airport employee pamper her as soon as they heard that she was sick - even in NY!!
Conclusion: Am I going to travel through Queen Alia international airport again? Only under extreme duress! And God forbid that anything goes wrong there which would require me to interact with an airport employee!
(Originally posted on MS on May 26, 2003)
