The Atlanta airport’s new international terminal has been open a week, and while it’s eased travel for some passengers, others are steamed about long waits to catch overwhelmed shuttle buses back to their parked cars or MARTA.
“It just seemed like an overly onerous process,” said Tom Cooney, of Dunwoody, who waited in line for a shuttle for about 25 minutes when he arrived from London on Saturday.
Officials at Hartsfield-Jackson International acknowledge some glitches -- including using 14-passenger shuttles that are proving too small -- and say they are adding vehicles and considering bigger ones to shorten lines.
Their fixes will be tested with the start of the summer travel season this weekend. About 1.6 million passengers are expected to use the airport over the six-day Memorial Day weekend that started Thursday by airport calculations.
Officials say the early problems are tied mainly to travelers who parked at the main terminal before the international terminal opened and now are returning to find that they must ride a shuttle to get back to their cars in the main terminal decks. Travelers who use the new international terminal both going and coming can park there.
Indeed, many travelers have lauded the efficiency the new terminal brings by eliminating the cumbersome requirement for Atlanta-bound travelers to recheck bags after clearing customs and then ride the airport train to the distant main terminal, where they pick up bags a second time.
The new terminal, built adjacent to the international gate concourse, enables travelers to leave directly after clearing customs.
Still, the introduction of a second entrance on the other side of the airport also adds complexity. Atlanta travelers have long been accustomed to a single point of entry and exit regardless of airline or destination; many other big airports use multiple terminals and have shuttle networks to connect them.
Another wrinkle: People who need to rent cars or want to ride MARTA still have to ride a shuttle to connect to those services. There are no plans to extend MARTA, which has its southernmost station at the main terminal, to the new one.
Craig Kimbrough, of Atlanta, said he always bragged about how efficient Hartsfield-Jackson is for how many passengers it handles as the world’s busiest airport. But after getting mired in a long wait for a shuttle after returning on a flight from Dubai last week, he said, “I couldn’t believe we had lost the great airport that we had.”
Kimbrough said he waited in line for the shuttle with more than 100 people for about 45 minutes, and figured it ended up taking more than an hour to get to the MARTA station. Some people took taxis to the main terminal rather than wait, he said.
“They’ve made MARTA so inconvenient to use that I’m just really disappointed,” Kimbrough said.
Cooney, the flier from Dunwoody, said riding the shuttle to MARTA took the luster off the new terminal.
“Going back to a jitney bus -- [it’s] sort of going back in time here.”
Airport general manager Louis Miller acknowledged the complaints.
“We’ve added a lot of shuttles to keep (lines) down. We put a lot of resources into it,” Miller said. “The lines are going down.”
He said the airport has 14 international terminal shuttles and is considering assigning more from its park-and-ride shuttle fleet, as well as adding larger ones. Managers also are tweaking schedules.
“We’ll do whatever it takes to work more efficiently,” Miller said.
Other gripes involve the walk from Concourse E, which houses international gates, to the adjacent international terminal. Arriving passengers must remain separate on their way to customs and cannot use the train, though there are moving sidewalks.
George Junca took issue with the the lack of daily parking at the new terminal; there is only hourly or long-term. He arrived Wednesday on a flight from Brazil for a business trip, and said he ended up paying more than $100 for three days of hourly parking in the airport garage next to the terminal.
The airport has touted its park-and-ride garage. But “as a traveler, the last thing I want to do after traveling 9 hours is to wait for a shuttle to the park-and-ride,” Junca said. He may use a cab for his next trip, which he expects will cost about $70.
Still other passengers are confused by the international terminal entrance off I-75, as opposed to the main terminal access off I-85, and wind up going to the wrong place despite new interstate signs and other efforts to get the word out.
“It’s gonna take some time,” Miller said. “This is something new. It’s new for everybody.”
-- AJC photographer Jason Getz contributed to this article
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