Needless queues and competitiveness

“Everywhere else I know, you only need to line up three, maybe four times at most,” he asserted.

And he’s right. Let’s count the ways. When you approach the Ninoy Aquino International Airport to leave for abroad, your vehicle must first line up for a cursory “security check”, where the guard asks you to open the car’s glove compartment, as if that’s the only possible place you could hide a gun or bomb. There may be several guns under the seats, or a suitcase full of explosives in the back, for that matter – but the guards will probably wave you through anyway, like they do all the time after a superficial, almost reluctant, glance inside the vehicle. And this superfluous exercise does nothing but delay the traffic leading to the terminal. That’s line number one.

On reaching the terminal, you line up as a guard looks over your passport and ticket to weed out non-passengers from entering. Never mind that in this age of e-tickets, anyone with a laptop and a printer can easily fake an e-ticket anyway. And you need not even strictly print out your e-ticket to be able to check in, as long as you have your passport with you. Besides, ours is the only airport I’ve seen where non-passengers can’t get into the check-in area. That’s line number two.

A few paces later, you line up again as you pass all your bags through an X-ray machine. Everywhere else I know, they screen your checked-in luggage after you’ve parted with them at check in. And if they see something suspicious, they’ll either call you back to the counter to explain or open your bag for inspection. Well, that’s already line number three – and you haven’t even got anywhere near your airline counter yet.

Your fourth queue will be your first one elsewhere – as you wait to check in. 

Now if you happen to have bought your ticket online, chances are your Philippine travel tax isn’t paid yet, so the airline attendant sends you to another line – at the travel tax counter of the Department of Tourism, where you dutifully pay US$39 (more if you’re travelling business or first class and honest enough to say so). So you’re done with line number five (which not everyone needs to go through, but is increasingly necessary as more people discover cheaper tickets available online).

You go back to the airline counter to get your boarding pass, and now you’re ready for line number six, to pay the $13 terminal fee. The government has lately moved to eliminate this step and build the terminal fee into ticket prices – a welcome move, at long last. But alas, they haven’t quite mastered how to do this for international flights yet. After that, you proceed to line number seven, for the obligatory immigration check – only the second queue you would have encountered somewhere else. And some countries have even eliminated this altogether as the airline is tasked to take care of collecting your immigration departure card, if they even have one at all (really unnecessary in this age of computerisation).

Line number eight is for the intensive security check on your body and hand luggage, again an inevitable step nowadays wherever you are, especially after 9-11. And if you are travelling to the United States, this is not the last security check you go through either. You line up again, now for the ninth time, as you enter your departure gate, where the airline staff manually inspect your hand luggage – in apparent complete distrust of the airport security check you’ve just gone through.

Finally, your flight is ready for boarding, and you line up – either for your 9th or 10th time – to get onto your plane, at which time you’d be so exhausted and/or exasperated for having to line up at least three times more than in airports overseas. Assistant Secretary Sy asks: “Has anyone bothered to figure out what going through so many unnecessary and avoidable queues costs us in terms of productivity and competitiveness?” And we all know airports are but one example among many.

I wrote two years ago about all the unnecessary hurdles we Filipinos like to impose on ourselves, in things ranging from starting a business to obtaining some clearance or official document – in what I described as a seeming case of national masochism. In the name of productivity and competitiveness (not to mention kindness to our fellow Filipinos), can someone please tell me that things are finally changing?