cacapasa--back when they had the OLD building, the traffic through the airport was a lot less than what it is now. I really don't know what the exact numbers are, but I'm sure those numbers wouldn't be that hard to find, if I weren't too lazy to look them up.

I personally miss the old Cafe Juliana, which was upstairs, as the food and the view there was better than anything in the new building ever was, or will be, for sure. I DON'T miss having to haul very HEAVY carry on bags up those stairs. I miss the old, literally outside bar, where one could sit and get your last dose of sun and warmth, before heading back to the cold north. I do NOT miss not having a jetway, especially as I grow older. Other than those things, I really don't remember much about the old airport. Nostalgia is a great thing, and in general, I think one has a tendency to remember ONLY the good things. The bad stuff generally kind of fades from memory.

The current arrivals situation is untenable, but allegedly, it is only temporary. I do not know whether there will be more than one conveyor belt for luggage or not. Pre Irma, there was not.

All of which is not to say at all that I am sticking up for PJIA management, which I think has done a positively poor job of "managing" this rebuild of the airport. Why that is, I don't really know, but there are zero excuses in my mind for the airport still being in the state it is, six years post Irma. I am concerned however, that they have gone totally techie in the rebuild and it only takes one or two tech breakdowns to totally break the system. Hopefully that won't happen very often, but I fear it WILL happen. And when it does, there will be a whole heck of a lot of unhappy people. As I often have the opportunity to say in my work "computers are great, when they work". We shall see how things turn out.