Stockholm, we need to talk about your airport. In the midst of a sea of travel challenges this summer, Stockholm Arlanda stands out as a model of dysfunction and disinterest in the well-being—or even travel—of passengers.
On my trip to the Balkans, I booked my flight through Stockholm for three nights, both because it made the ticket only $1000 from Kona and because I have managed to fail to reach Sweden on trips to every country surrounding it. I’ll admit that I kind of expected the somewhat cold efficiency that seems to characterize most Scandinavian airports, but what I experienced instead was almost comical incompetence and personal frustration.
Putting aside the huge, confusing lines that greeted passengers when they arrived at Arlanda, a discussion of my frustration has to start with Terminal 5, a place with a long history of disappointing passengers. On my flight out to Sofia, despite arriving four hours early, I came closer to missing a flight than I ever have. Passengers are first confronted by a long line just to enter the terminal, a line that quickly stretched the length of the SkyCity area ahead of the terminal and a line that actually managed to move backward because latecomers would simply merge into the head of the line. After the nearly hour-long wait outside the terminal, though, the real adventure began, with 200+ person lines at every luggage gate. Mine, at the LOT desk, did not move for two hours other than the people cutting the line because the luggage conveyor was broken. Eventually, passengers were able to check in but had to run their own baggage to a special baggage area before running for the flight that was not delayed despite the problems.
I made my flight, but my luggage did not arrive in Bosnia until five days later.
On my return through Stockholm, though, I was prepared. Or I thought I was. I booked a room at the Radisson Blu Stockholm Hotel (a great choice!) at the airport, literally two hundred meters from Terminal 5, and despite leaving my room four hours before the flight, I nearly managed to miss another flight.
At certain points during the next 240 minutes, I assumed that I had died and gone to hell, as other than a 15-minute coffee, I stood in line after line, increasingly nervous about my connection. 30 minutes outside the terminal, 70 minutes in the check-in gate, and 30 minutes at the gate were all reasonably predictable, but the 80 minutes at passport control to leave the country were not predictable, especially to the large number of passengers who missed their connections waiting for the two passport control agents to text their friends between passengers, only finding time to process passports and harass customers in between their personal time.
The passport control was honestly unlike anything I have ever experienced. While I merely had to wait an absurd length of time, I watched the two agents covering 12 long-haul international flights not only flatly refuse to help customers who went through the wrong, poorly-marked line but send them to the back of the line next to theirs. One man, who politely asked people ahead of him if he could cut to make his flight was not only refused service by one of the passport agents but had security called when he merely pressed his case that he had a flight he could not miss.
I assume he’s still stuck in the 4th circle of Arlanda Hell.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed by Stockholm, which seemed to have neither the quirky charm of Oslo nor the cosmopolitanism of Copenhagen, but I wonder how much of that disappointment came from the experience of trying to enter—and leave—the city. A good—or bad—airport experience can absolutely set the tone for a city visit, and I hope that Arlanda can get its act together and resolve frustrations that seem to be more than my own.
By the way, other than an excessive cab charge, the airport experience at Sofia, Bulgaria was just fine. 🙂
