Airports are places of constant activity. With flights arriving and leaving almost right round the clock, they are among the busiest places you could visit.
Travelling abroad can be a stressful enough event in itself too, so when the airport you are travelling to has building and expansion work going on, it can make the whole journey even more arduous.
And this is what you can expect if you are travelling from another country into Edinburgh Airport in the near future. The immigration hall there is being enhanced to provide better services to everyone who arrives at the airport. But of course any work of this nature tends to cause a great amount of upheaval while it is actually going on.
The long hours that all airports work mean that these types of enhancements cannot be done while the airport is empty. There is no such thing as coming in and working on a Sunday while the place is quiet, because the airport is busy right across the whole week.
In the end though, the upheavals will last for around three months and the result will be a much better service for everyone who comes into the immigration hall in the future. As Gordon Dewar, the managing director of Edinburgh Airport, has said, disruptions are unavoidable when work of this nature is taken on.
But let’s look to the future and think about what these works will eventually mean for the airport. They will certainly make the immigration hall more streamlined and more functional, because there will be double the number of immigration desks than there are at the moment. This will dramatically cut down the waiting time currently experienced by people passing through the hall. Of course anyone who is unfortunate enough to be travelling into the airport while the work is going on may end up queuing for longer than is normally necessary. But the key is to look forward to the future and to the results of all the work that is going on.
Needless to say the airport has promised that the disruption will be kept as minimal as possible during those three essential months of work. Travellers will be watching and hoping however that the work does not overrun for any reason.
Perhaps the most puzzling part of this expansion of Edinburgh Airport is that it is coming at what could be a busy time of the year for the airport. Some people will be thinking of heading off on holiday for Christmas, but what about those people from abroad who are coming back here?
This could disrupt some people’s travelling plans over the festive period, although hopefully the fact that it is the immigration hall that is affected will keep the numbers to a minimum. In the end, those who are travelling to Edinburgh Airport from abroad have no choice but to go through that part of the airport. They must just hope that the journey will be as pain free as possible.