The Worst Airport

"This airport is like the Inferno. One manages to get into it, one is badly off inside and one doesn't know how to get out." So a Belgian priest complained to the management of Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Intercontinental Airport, less grandly known as Fiumicino (Little River). Infernal it is. On an average day the 22,000 passengers who land, take off or transit at Fiumicino on 62 different commercial carriers participate in a drama worthy of Dante.

As Cesare Romiti, the director of Alitalia, put it: "Fiumicino is the worst airport in the world." At least 50% of the planes are late, some for as long as three hours. The reason: the airport has only two runways to accommodate 400 to 500 aircraft a day in peak seasons, and since the runways are built at right angles, they cannot be used simultaneously. Incoming passengers have to wait at least an hour for their luggage. As the baggage is plucked piece by piece from aircraft holds, baggage handlers--when not on strike--toss it on two long counters where travelers from all arriving flights have to pick it up.

The litany of Fiumicino's ills encompasses just about everything that can happen to a traveler. Flight information is virtually impossible to obtain; harassed clerks have little or no data on arrivals, departures and connecting flights. TV screens showing departure gates are often out of order. Signs are scarce, and the loudspeaker system is unintelligible.

There is no rest for the flight weary. Coffee bars sell no sandwiches; even coffee, in espresso-land, is difficult to obtain. Toilets often bear signs reading UNDER REPAIR or CLOSED FROM 11 A.M. TO 5 P.M. Besides all that, the roof leaks.

More seriously, Fiumicino can be perilous. According to Aviation Writer Francesco Perego, "Our radar and radio assistance are the least efficient in Europe." Fiumicino has to make do with only two radar installations, and operations experts say that more are needed. The harried air-traffic controllers are all members of the military, and each has to direct 15 to 20 planes at a time, compared with two or three for their counterparts in London and eight to ten in Paris. The wonder is that the airport has only about 40 near collisions annually and has had no major air accidents this year.

The basic problem is that responsibility is divided among numerous government bureaucracies, each of which can hold up changes for years. Italy hopes to invest $580 million in improvements, including a third runway to be completed next February. If all these are accomplished by 1974, the airport will theoretically be able to handle the 9,000,000 passengers who struggle their way through Fiumicino now, but by that time traffic is expected to reach 12 million a year.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.