Cleaning Cabins, Parking Planes at London City Airport; Why Hong Kong International Was Voted the World's Number One Airport.
QUEST: London City is primarily a commuter airport. But it still handles more than 3,000 bags every day. The right passenger with the right bag on the right plane at the right time, and they've got 15 minutes to do it all. So this is Nice and this is?</s>MARK STEPHENSON, BAGGAGE HANDLER: Antwerp.</s>QUEST: Antwerp.</s>STEPHENSON: And Dublin.</s>QUEST: And Dublin.</s>STEPHENSON: Watch.</s>QUEST: I'm watching Nice, Antwerp and Dublin -- Nice, Antwerp and Dublin, right. Which is Dublin? Take the little sticky off. Put it there, following the line. Oops. You often wonder why they make you put the straps inside the bag. This is the reason why. There you are. The strap got caught. The belt ground to a halt. And this is the result. We're losing time. Oh, no, the belt's moving. Hey, a first one for me.</s>STEPHENSON: And that's your first mistake.</s>QUEST: What? To Nice.</s>STEPHENSON: To Nice flight. We have a BA, Nice. You have an Air France, Nice.</s>QUEST: What? Hey, at least it was going to the right destination. Right, that's Warsaw, Geneva. Where's Hu Dong Ding (ph)? We've got Dublin. All in line.</s>STEPHENSON: Stack them, rack them and pack them.</s>QUEST: Stack them, rack them and pack them. And here's the Dublin, the 21. My, this is a heavy bag. For goodness sake, why don't they just leave some of this stuff at home? I thought I had just about got it and then... Is this right plane?</s>STEPHENSON: No.</s>QUEST: No, it's not? It would be the heaviest bag that I've got in the wrong vault (ph). I hope there was something fragile in that. The key to all of this is efficiency, the right bags on the right plane for the right passenger. The best airports in the world are those that are the most efficient. And the winner this year has been Hong Kong International.</s>AYESHA DURGAHEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's the cathedral-like roof that first strikes you entering Hong Kong International. Walking down the ramp, passengers are gently eased into the airport. Spacious, sun-filled, seamless, just some of the reasons why HKIA has now been voted the world's best airport for the seventh time since it opened in 1998.</s>FARHAD HEYDARI, TRAVEL JOURNALIST: The have gone and put together an absolutely perfect package for passengers. Transport links are top notch. Amenities and services in the airport are superb. Flawless security, passport checkpoints. An intuitiveness and design ethos that makes you feel like you're not stuck in water bottle really. It is a terrific example of what an airport can be.</s>DURGAHEE: Out of the top-five airports in the SkyTrax Awards, four of them are in Asia.</s>EDAWRD PLAISTED, CEO, SKYTRAX: Asia very clearly is setting the benchmark now. And it has set a benchmark that really is quite somewhere above anything we could offer in Europe, the Middle East, North America.</s>DURGAHEE: After HKIA, Singapore's Changi Airport took second place. It shares the same level of efficiency with its long-term rival. Bags are off the aircraft and on the belt even before travelers have cleared immigration. Incheon in South Korea came third, followed my Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur. Europe has its first appearance with Munich coming in at number five. HKIA's airport chief, Stanley Hui, doesn't see Changi or any other airport as a real threat.</s>STANLEY HUI HON-CHUNG, CEO, HONG KONG AIRPORT AUTHORITY: We see them really as so-called competition. But an important thing, I think, is to actually make sure that you do your own work well. The passengers, before they board the airplane, actually have a very pleasant time. Whether you want to do shopping, whether you want to have a cup of coffee, whether you want to go to some corners of the airport and just do your own reading, or you can go on the Internet for free, and that's the sort of things that we always continue to do and continue to enhance on.</s>DURGAHEE: Reclaiming its title of SkyTrax's world's best airport means a lot to HKIA, since it is the passenger themselves who voted.</s>QUEST: We're back at London City. We've got another aircraft coming in to land. This is a map showing all the planes in the air heading towards London City Airport. And this is Ramp Control. Here, they make sure everything goes smoothly once the plane's on the ground. This gentleman decides where it's going to park. He then tells this gentleman, who makes sure that all the serving is ready and waiting. London City will hit more than 100,000 take offs and landings in just a couple of years. And they do it all with one runway. Across Europe, indeed, in most of the world, the call these days is for more runways, more flights, more planes, more air travel. It's a controversial issue, as Jim Boulden explains.</s>JIM BOULDEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The sit-ins...</s>BOULDEN: ... marches and protests, even an eleventh-hour intervention to buy up some of the land weren't enough to hold back Heathrow's expansion.</s>GEOFF HOON, U.K. SECRETARY OF STATE FOR TRANSPORT: The need for this decision is the existing capacity at Heathrow.</s>BOULDEN: If the current government gets its way, the world's busiest international airport will get a third runway and a sixth terminal. Heathrow currently has two runways. The plan is for a third runway and a sixth terminal to go here along this farmland. But also, they would have to destroy 700 homes. Geraldine Nicholson lives just across the motorway from where the runway will start. The school where her children attend will be knocked down.</s>GERALDINE NICHOLSON, NO THIRD RUNWAY ACTION GROUP: The government seriously needs to look at 21st century solutions to what is 20th century transport. We need to be looking at high-speed rails, to see how we connect from the north of the country down to the south, down to Europe.</s>BOULDEN: The government announced just such a massive railway hub at Heathrow to compliment the expansion. One of the ideas, fewer people driving to the airport could help Heathrow meet tough new European Union environmental targets that will be challenged with more flights. The business community says the government has to find ways to meet those targets or London will lose out.</s>JO VALENTINE, LONDON FIRST: The capacity utilization of other European airports is much lower than Heathrow. So we are suffering the problems at Heathrow because of a failure to build in the additional capacity there.</s>BOULDEN: Just look at Heathrow's competitor-safe proponents. Charles De Gaulle has three terminals. Frankfurt has plans for a third terminal and a fourth runway. Amsterdam's Schiphol already has five main runways. Even so, local residents say enough is enough.</s>NICHOLSON: Now is the time for the government to actually stand up and say to BAA, no, you can't have it this time. Terminal five should be the last expansion of Heathrow.</s>BOULDEN: It took 20 years to get Heathrow terminal five off the ground. Opponents of a third runway vow to make the government's new expansion plans just as difficult. But if protests fail, the world's busiest international airport is likely to get a lot busier in the next decade.</s>QUEST: Gently meandering their way up the docks, those boats have now meant that operations at London's City have had to be temporarily suspended. It's planned that this waterway is regulated. And those boats could interfere with air navigation equipment. So somewhere out there, there are planes in a holding stack waiting for permission to once again land at the airport. After the break, we're in Dubai. Terminal three -- is bigger better?