Rabia Gulzar

Karachi Airport: An Institutional Failure on Full Display Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport has quietly turned into a place of embarrassment for international travelers and daily humiliation for Pakistani citizens. Let’s be clear. Many countries still use physically manned immigration counters. That is not the problem. The problem is basic operational incompetence. At Karachi Airport, immigration queues are arranged vertically instead of horizontally. One officer is expected to manage three parallel lines. This is not queue management. This is chaos by design. I have travelled across, have never seen such a layout at an international airport. An FIA officer candidly admitted what passengers already know: They are exhausted from repeatedly explaining the problem to airport staff, but there is no willingness or capacity to fix it. Passengers routinely spend 2 to 4 hours just to clear immigration. And it doesn’t end there. Baggage handling is another endurance test. Bags are reportedly scanned before being placed on the belt, causing long delays. After waiting close to an hour to receive your luggage, passengers are then asked to scan the same bags again while exiting. This is not layered security. It is duplication without logic. Outside the terminal, the situation deteriorates further. The pickup area resembles a political protest site rather than an international gateway. The Pakistan Airports Authority appears to be operating in permanent reaction mode, as if waiting for a security incident instead of preventing one through planning and flow management. These are not technology problems. These are governance and accountability failures. Airports are a country’s first and last impression. Right now, Karachi Airport reflects systemic apathy, poor coordination between CAA, ASF and FIA for airport operations, and a complete absence of service design thinking. Pakistan can do better. But only if institutions stop normalizing dysfunction.