When you are making time-critical decisions about airport ground transportation, you need accurate advice. At Athens airport I needed to get to Piraeus for a ferry to the island of Poros – and time was against me. The easyJet plane from Gatwick had arrived 10 minutes early, but from the performance of the ground staff you would infer that no aircraft with passengers on board had ever arrived before.
The processes were so slow that it took 50 minutes from touchdown to exiting the airport, and that was with cabin baggage. Heaven knows what happened to those who had checked luggage in. One train an hour runs to Piraeus, and it would just about get me there on time.
But with 20 minutes before it left, I thought I should check if the X96 Piraeus Express bus was leaving imminently. There was one immediately outside the airport terminal, seemingly ready to go. When is it leaving? “Now, and it takes one hour,” promised the lady who seemed to be in charge.
Marvellous, that means I am sure to reach the ship in time. Except that the bus did not leave “now”. It waited for a further 20 minutes and, by then, was so overloaded that the journey took 90 minutes.
I missed the ferry. Last week I wrote about a similarly frustrating journey from Marseille to its airport, and from Bristol airport into the city . Goodness, did that strike a nerve: thank you for all your responses, which I shall distill here.
Charlotte Goodall provides a wide-ranging response. “Cork airport is miles away.
