KARACHI: A survey conducted by "The Guide to Sleeping in Airports" website shows Islamabad's Benazir Bhutto International Airport as the world's worst airport.

The survey says the airport, often "likened to a central prison", can be aggressive yet inconsistent in its security checks and crowd control is often minimal if not entirely absent.

The airport is also largely unclean and is sparsely equipped in terms of technology, the survey says.

A traveller told the website that “the Islamabad airport is like as a central prison. Many of touts & taxi drivers loot people at airport & outside”.

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“Travellers have also complained about the airport’s inability to handle passengers for over a decade,” the website said, adding that it was a relief that a new airport was finally being constructed in Pakistan’s federal capital.

The new airport is slated to be completed for mid-2016, the website said. However, a lawmaker recently told Dawn that with the construction moving at snail’s pace, it seemed that the new airport would not be operational even by 2035.

Recently, lawmakers also expressed concern over increase in the estimated cost of the new airport.

The chairperson of Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Division and Civil Aviation Senator Kalsoom Perveen said technical faults and delay in the construction work had increased the cost from Rs37 billion to Rs85 billion.

The website rated Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport as the second worst airport in the world with Nepal’s Kathmandu Tribhuvan International Airport taking the third slot.

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