Travel: Double standards

I REFERRED to the irritating need to wait for luggage not once but twice at Orlando airport in Florida (Independent Traveller, 9 April). Henri Pageot, facilities planning director of BAA, writes: 'Generally, international handling at almost every US airport is treated as a second order of priority to their domestic operations. Witness Kennedy, Chicago and Los Angeles, where international arrivals passengers are bussed to the immigration halls in the main terminals.'

Mr Pageot says that 'double reclaim' has been a feature of many US-designed airports for a number of years, notably at Seattle. 'By locating the port clearance controls in an airside satellite building it allows international passengers to travel to the main terminal via the transit system along with domestic passengers from other gates.'

Travellers to the new Denver airport will find not a transit system linking them to the main terminal but a bridge that crosses the first taxiway. 'Everyone in the industry hopes the ground movement controller remembers, on some future snowy night, that this particular taxiway has not got headroom under the bridge for all aircraft types to pass]'