Orio al Serio Bergamo Airport(BGY)

...give it it’s full title Orio al Serio International Airport, is located in northern Italy almost midway between Milan and the Lake Garda district, and just off the main A4 motorway from Milan to Venice.

~ ~ We decided to use Bergamo Airport for two main reasons. Number one is that it is the main airport used by the budget airline Ryanair for the district, and number two is that it is very conveniently located for the Lake Garda district ...
...one of the very few favourable comments I will have to make about this airport, as it was only a little over a 100 kilometres from Pischiera on the southern shores of Lake Garda, and hence just a leisurely drive of about an hour or so in our hire car. (If ANY drive on an Italian motorway can ever be described as leisurely!)

~ ~ As you have already probably deduced from my title of this review, to say that I was somewhat unimpressed ... more

~ ~ Bergamo Airport, or to give it it’s full title Orio al Serio International Airport, is located in northern Italy almost midway between Milan and the Lake Garda district, and just off the main A4 motorway from Milan to Venice.

~ ~ We decided to use Bergamo Airport for two main reasons. Number one is that it is the main airport used by the budget airline Ryanair for the district, and number two is that it is very conveniently located for the Lake Garda district where we had a week’s holiday in 2006. This is one of the very few favourable comments I will have to make about this airport, as it was only a little over a 100 kilometres from Pischiera on the southern shores of Lake Garda, and hence just a leisurely drive of about an hour or so in our hire car. (If ANY drive on an Italian motorway can ever be described as leisurely!)

~ ~ As you have already probably deduced from my title of this review, to say that I was somewhat unimpressed with this Italian airport would rank as the understatement of the year. If Satan were to design an airport with the sole intention of tormenting and torturing innocent travellers, then I doubt he could do a better job than the Italians have managed at Bergamo! In all my years of travelling I have *NEVER* used such a poor airport, and have never been so glad to (finally) get on a plane and return to the relative sanity of Dublin Airport in Ireland. (That isn’t without its critics.)

~ ~ The outward journey from Dublin to Bergamo was OK, apart from the fact that the flight was over a hour late in arriving, but this is down to Ryanair rather than the airport. I honestly can’t recall the last time I got a Ryanair flight that was on time, so how they compile their statistics for being one of the most reliable airlines is totally beyond me. But there again, most things that the CEO of Ryanair, Mr. Michael O’Leary does is beyond my understanding, and also that of most mere mortals. But I digress. Back to Bergamo.

~ ~ So what is it about Bergamo that has so risen my ire that I feel compiled to warn my fellow travellers to avoid it like a virulent strain of the bubonic plague?
Put simply the airport is simply too small to cope with the level of passengers that are currently using it. Too many passengers and too small an airport is *NOT* a good mix as the equation simply doesn’t compute, and the people who suffer the most as a consequence are the unfortunate travellers who are unlucky enough to find themselves at the mercy of the airlines, car hire companies, and airport authorities at this most dreadful of locations.

~ ~ The trouble started at the car hire desk (Avis) on our arrival. I’d booked a compact car which I then decided was going to be too small for our purposes, as we had belatedly invited a friend of my teenage daughter to join us on the holiday. After waiting in a queue for about an hour for the one clerk to deal with about three incoming flights I attempted to upgrade to an estate car, only too be told that none were available and that I would have to take a Nissan ‘X’ Trail (large 4 x 4) instead. This was two grades above what I’d originally ordered, and cost me a staggering €300 plus in extra charges. You COULD say that this was my own fault for booking the wrong car in the first place, and you’d be partly correct. But only if you happened to BELIEVE the clerk who told me there were no estate cars available, only for me to see about a dozen or so of them in the Avis car park bays when I went to pick up my vehicle! They also refused to give me the 15% discount I was entitled to as a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists. (I’ll be following this up)
Even when I'd fixed the car hire problem, we still weren’t sorted. The car hire bays are about two or three kilometres from the main terminal (only terminal) and thus this entails queuing yet again to use the courtesy bus to take you to your vehicle. Not a big deal you might think, but it is when the aforementioned bus is nothing more than a large van which is totally inadequate to cope with the volume of travellers wishing to use it. After waiting in line for about 45 minutes and a number of round trips I eventually managed to get on this bus, but only by standing just inside the door holding my golf clubs as they wouldn’t fit into the small baggage area. So a totally unacceptable service as far as I’m concerned, not least from a safety viewpoint. Is it LEGAL for a bus passenger in Italy to have to stand with their head banging off the roof while precariously holding a set of golf clubs while a lunatic of an Italian driver throws the bus around as if he was on a Formula One racetrack? It wouldn’t be here in Ireland, I can tell you that much!

~ ~ On our return from Lake Garda we delayed our arrival at Bergamo for as long as humanly possible, given the fact that we had to check out of our holiday apartment at 10 AM, and our return flight to Dublin wasn’t scheduled until 9.10 PM that evening. We eventually gave in and arrived at the airport around 6.00 PM. Check in wasn’t until 7 PM, so we had a bit of a wait. This would have been tolerable only for the fact that the seating in the airport in both departures and arrivals is totally inadequate for the volume of passengers using the airport. At a rough guess I would estimate that the number of passengers looking to rest their weary legs outnumbered the available seating in the ratio of about five to one! It was difficult to even find an empty space on the floor on which to sit, never mind an empty seat!

~ ~ Temperatures in the Lake Garda district during our visit were way above the seasonal norm, with the thermometer hovering between the 35 to 40 degrees Centigrade mark most of the time. For visitors more used to the lower temperatures of the British Isles and Ireland this is uncomfortably hot (to say the least) so we were looking forward to the relative comfort of the terminal building at Bergamo which is supposedly air-conditioned. I say supposedly because like nearly everything else at this airport the air-con was completely unable to cope with the task of cooling off its customers. It was difficult to even spot the difference in temperature when you walked through the terminal doors! Maybe they do it deliberately to boost the sales of their vastly overpriced drinks! We don’t drink alcohol, but a Fanta orange (lukewarm) at €3 for a small bottle is a bit much when we had been buying them all over the region at a mere €1 for the previous week. The only good value we got was at a Smoothie bar, where I purchased a totally delicious ice-cold berry drink for only €3. (The equivalent would have cost me €4.50 at Dublin airport)

~ ~ Things didn’t improve any when it came time to check-in for our flight. Only two flights checking in at a check-in area with about 20 or so desks, and yet the Bergamo authorities STILL managed to make a complete cock-up of the whole procedure! Instead of keeping the two queues separate, they (in their wisdom) decided to have them directly opposite each other at opposing sides of the check-in area. Total and complete chaos and mayhem. The two queues ended up competing for the same floor space, with the end result that nobody knew where the respective queues started or ended. The result was a melee that you could have been forgiven for mistaking as a rugby scrum, with bodies everywhere, and good manners forsaken in the forlorn attempt to actually get your luggage checked onto the plane. Ryanair, of course, didn’t help any by only having one check-in desk open for the flight to check in God alone knows how many passengers. I complained when we eventually reached the check-in desk (after about an hour and a half!), but (of course) the poor, harassed girl didn’t give a damn. All she probably wanted to do was to get her shift over and done with, and get home to a cold shower to cool off.

~ ~ With check-in eventually achieved, I decided it might be a good idea to get ourselves a cuppa and a wee bite to eat. There are various small snack bars and one wet (alcohol) bar in the airport, but all available seating was already occupied, no doubt by other travellers who were unable to find any alternative seating. So we took the lift one floor up to what is supposed to be the “up- market” restaurant. This again was packed to the gills, but we eventually managed to find two spare seats by hanging around until we spotted someone getting ready to leave. But make no mistake, there is nothing up-market about this eatery. A simple self-service snack bar, with ready prepared and over-priced food and I couldn’t even get a cup of tea for my parched wife! (They didn’t do tea) Contrast this with the equivalent restaurant at Dublin Airport, where you get freshly cooked and wholesome grub, linen tablecloths, proper cutlery, and waiter service!

~ ~ Back down to the main concourse, where my teenage daughter and her friend went for a browse around the vastly overpriced “designer” retail outlets (about half a dozen) again selling mostly either tourist tat, or else designer handbags and sunglasses that you could buy at a fraction of the price outside of the airport. I did manage to get myself a couple of cartons of my favourite hand-rolling tobacco at about half the price that I would pay at home in Ireland at the admittedly well-stocked book and magazine store, where English books and newspapers were also available. A minus point here is that I was unable to pay by credit card!

~ ~ Things didn’t improve any when we got through the check-in area and up to the departure gates. The scene here was like something from Dante’s Inferno, with people milling around and sprawled everywhere, again because the seating was totally inadequate to cope with the sheer volume of passengers. What made matters worse was that there was extra seating available through a (locked) door, but when I approached one of the security people to ask if it was possible to open this area up he simply looked at me as if I had two heads.

~ ~ Anyways, we eventually managed to escape this hellhole of an airport and get back to the relative sanity of the airport in Dublin. My only surprise was that our luggage and my beloved golf clubs managed to arrive back at the same time we did, and all in one piece! Our experience of Bergamo was the one black spot on what was otherwise an extremely pleasant holiday in Lake Garda, where we will undoubtedly return. But on our next visit we will fly to Verona Airport, even if the cost of the flights is double what it would cost to fly to Bergamo.
My advice to any prospective travellers is to avoid this airport at all costs.

© KenJ 

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