Dabolim Dec 2009. We arrived on time with the Thompson flight from Gatwick Dec13th. The first change you will notice, is, the short walk from the plane to the terminal has been replaced by a coach ride. Two coaches with 'London Tube ' style seating take groups of 50 or so passengers to the Terminal. Once inside some heat sensing cameras scan new arrivals - the monitors are manned by a number of Medical staff wearing paper masks who stick a thermometer in the ear of random passengers as they go through. Your swine flu declaration forms are dumped on a table at this point. The Moscow plane had arrived early and had cleared the terminal, and the Monarch from Gatwick which was due in at about the same time was delayed. This resulted in a relatively smooth passage through immigration, baggage, customs and the taxi rank.
Returning on Dec 27th began equally well - we arrived early, and were among the first through the bag scan and check-in. The Thompson flight was checked in from the first terminal building, while the Gatwick Monarch and Moscow planes were using the second. We made the mistake of going into the cafe for a spot of breakfast and joined the queue for immigration, which by this time had tailed back from the immigration desks in the second terminal building to the Cafe area....we couldn't actually see the desks!! This was the slowest moving queue I have ever been in - Goa or anywhere else, and after an hour or so it became apparent why. The passengers from the large Russian jumbo, were checking in much closer to the immigration desks and, the Dabolim staff who were supposed to be organising the queues were letting them join well in front of passengers at the back of the queue rather than directing them to the end. So our queue, rather than going anywhere, was constantly being swelled by Russian passengers towards the front. After about 90 minutes and some 'words' with the staff concerned we managed to persuade them to keep our 'line' intact for the most part, but it was quite a disorganized setup, and at one stage I heard some heated 'discussions' somewhere in the chaos behind, as passengers realised they were not going to make it through on time.......and that some passengers were not joining the queue in the correct place. Considering we had arrived some 3 and a half hours early, we JUST made it. Others were not so lucky, and our plane was delayed as the authorities attempted to get people through the security checks.