Travails of an International traveller

Now, I have made enough international travels during the last 3- 4 years of my life covering countries as varied as United States of America to the State of Kuwait. However, I was in for quite a few surprises when I was about to take my flight to Canada on 11 November 2007. I took a Kingfisher flight from Kochi to Bangalore on 10 November. Needless to say, it was one of the best flights I have ever had in my life. Kingfisher has been the most preferred airline of many a domestic traveller ever since it was launched with much fanfare. Coming from the UB Group, headed by the very charismatic Vijay Mallya, Kingfisher really lives up to its tagline- "King of Good times". The aircraft is very well maintained, the interiors are very well done, the food served is of avant grade quality and taste and the cabin crew (handpicked by the Chairman, it seems) look like heavenly beings. However, things were different when I landed in Bangalore. To start with, Bangalore airport has hardly any space but has a lot of planes flying out of it. To add to this, the International terminal is so small that it cannot handle more than 2 flights at a time. With Air France and Lufthansa connecting Bangalore to Europe through planes flying out at more or less the same time, the airport authorities were finding it real tough to handle the crowd. There are no enough luggage scanning machines or check in counters which makes check in a long and cumbersome process. Add to this, an unclean environment and lack of adequate chairs for the passengers, the 4 hour wait at the airport was like hell. The icing on the cake was the condition that was put by the Indian Aviation authorities- that you are allowed to take only one piece of luggage with you inside the aircraft and if you have a laptop with you, you wont be allowed to take anything else other than the laptop bag. Now, this made no sense to me. Considering the number of business passengers that travel out of Bangalore these days thanks to the booming IT/ ITES industries, it goes without saying that there will be many people travelling with their laptops. Considering the duration of the flight to North America (which is where most of the people travel to), the number of aircrafts the traveler has to change to reach his final destination and the dubious distinction earned by US in misplacing luggage, I feel it is high time the authorities gave this rule a second thought. What would the traveller do if his luggage is lost in transit/ does not reach his destination along with him? Will he wrap the laptop bag around his waist or should he continue wearing the same pair of clothes that he has been wearing all through his 30 odd hours of flight? (wearing the same pair of clothes for close to 48 hours is not fun, and this I am telling you out of my own experience). Considering the kind of revenue the industry is generating and the number of business travellers flying out of India these days, I think it is high time the Indian aviation authorities did something to get this rule amended. Some food for thought for them would be the fact that the western countries do allow travellers to carry a bag weighing upto 10 kilograms with them into the aircraft in addition to their laptop bags. Let us hope the authorities understand the plight of the travellers and do something to get the rule amended in favour of the travellers...