Calcutta: Calcutta airport's X-ray scan reveals the terminal illness that its pretence to modernisation seeks to hide.
Inline baggage X-ray, a basic facility at almost every airport that calls itself modern, still isn't available to passengers taking flights from the city despite two machines being procured and installed in 2004-05. Both machines need a software upgrade to meet new norms but red tape has allegedly delayed that process as well as procurement of additional equipment.
While the privatised Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad airports have had an inline baggage scanning system for years, the state-run Calcutta airport still uses manually operated X-ray machines where passengers queue up to get their bags scanned before check-in.
The airport routinely receives complaints from people about flights being missed or check-in delayed by the queues in front of the baggage scanners.
Park Street resident Yamini Arora, who studies in Ooty, recently missed an IndiGo flight to Chennai allegedly because she lost 30-odd minutes trying to get her baggage scanned.
"Her flight was scheduled for takeoff at 6am and she reached the terminal at 4.30am. There was a long queue at the entrance because only one gate was open. Then she had to spend more than half an hour at the X-ray counter," her businessman father Surjit said.
10/02/15 Sanjay Mandal/Telegraph
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Inline baggage X-ray, a basic facility at almost every airport that calls itself modern, still isn't available to passengers taking flights from the city despite two machines being procured and installed in 2004-05. Both machines need a software upgrade to meet new norms but red tape has allegedly delayed that process as well as procurement of additional equipment.
While the privatised Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad airports have had an inline baggage scanning system for years, the state-run Calcutta airport still uses manually operated X-ray machines where passengers queue up to get their bags scanned before check-in.
The airport routinely receives complaints from people about flights being missed or check-in delayed by the queues in front of the baggage scanners.
Park Street resident Yamini Arora, who studies in Ooty, recently missed an IndiGo flight to Chennai allegedly because she lost 30-odd minutes trying to get her baggage scanned.
"Her flight was scheduled for takeoff at 6am and she reached the terminal at 4.30am. There was a long queue at the entrance because only one gate was open. Then she had to spend more than half an hour at the X-ray counter," her businessman father Surjit said.
10/02/15 Sanjay Mandal/Telegraph
