Trolleys missing in BIA?

With rebound in tourist arrivals as well as higher local traffic at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) passengers are being inconvenienced allegedly due to mismanagement of trolleys.

Passengers who arrived via two flights early hours of Monday said that there were no trolleys at hand at the baggage belts much to their disappointment and inconvenience.  Sources said that any passenger especially tourists who come on long-haul flights prefer to check out as soon as possible than being stuck inside the airport.The matter was brought to the notice of BIA officials on duty who had said due to large inflow of passengers trolleys could be scarce. However much to the dismay of passengers a large number of trolleys had been lying immediately outside the airport where passengers get into pick up vehicles.

This prompted one irate passenger to say that trolleys are there but BIA needs to better manage its equipment to better service the growing number of passengers. Recently Sri Lanka welcomed the 250,000th tourist, a number never achieved in less than four months whilst full year forecast was revised upwards to 800,000 from the original estimate of 700-750,000.

Last year BIA handled over 5 million passengers, up 60% over 3.2 million in 2009.