MADINAH, 2 November 2005 — In the five years that international flights have been landing at Prince Muhammad ibn Abdul Aziz Airport, the same problems come up every year.

Passengers complain the airport lacks major services. Poor treatment, an absence of basic services and overcrowding are among the complaints. Many people contend the airport shouldn’t be receiving international flights and say an expansion or a second airport is needed.

An airport staff member who requested anonymity told Arab News that the airport has problems. He said that the airport is understaffed and the number of employees working there can’t handle the large numbers of pilgrims arriving.

He said that the passenger hall is too small, and it gets very crowded if three flights arrived within seven minutes of each other. He also noted that the number of Passport Department workers is inadequate to handle the volume of arriving passengers.

“I couldn’t believe that an airport that receives international flights doesn’t have a currency exchange area,” said Mushtaq Ali, a Pakistani who arrived recently on a flight from Rome.

“It was unbelievable because we could not change the euro to local currency. Taxis only accept Saudi currency. The airport is in desperate need of a currency exchange office. There was only one ATM machine at the airport, too. I hope they make some changes.”

Some Saudis say the conditions are kind of embarrassing.

“It’s an embarrassment to see taxi drivers hunt for passengers,” said Khaled Al-Arfaj, a passenger arriving from Riyadh.

“The local people are used to seeing these sites and, though we reject it, we can accept it somehow. What we cannot accept is pilgrims going back home with images like these.”

Al-Arfaj said the authorities should monitor the private cars trying to steal customers at the airport.

“They charge pilgrims as much as SR50 for a trip downtown. This is cheating because the trip costs SR20. It’s uncivilized to see taxi drivers charging after customers,” Al-Arfaj added.

Is the airport a good idea gone bad?

“The airport was open to ease the pressure on the Jeddah International Airport, which is good,” said an engineer named Mukhtar. “Honestly, the airport was not ready to receive pilgrims. We’ve just created another problem in Madinah that used to be limited to Jeddah.”

He said they should either expand the airport or receive flights only at the limit of the airport’s capacity.”

People hope that past problems don’t come back to haunt pilgrims of the present.

“We still remember what happened last year, when the company that was responsible to transport the luggage of the pilgrims to the airport went on strike because of the long hours and low pay,” Mukhtar said.

“This delayed many flights and caused a huge problem. The Governorate of Madinah did fix the situation by hiring other companies to transfer the luggage. I hope that this doesn’t happen this year.”

Arab News tried to contact airport officials, but they were unavailable for comment.