Chennai: You may miss your domestic flight from Chennai airport even if you arrive there an hour before your flight as queues near baggage scanning machines can be long.
Inline baggage scanners that do multiple scans of checked-in bags, enabling passengers to deposit their bags at the check-in counters, were supposed to be installed by March last year, but there is no sign of them yet. The problem is worse during the morning peak hours.
Airports Authority of India (AAI) attribute the delay in getting the machines to new specifications introduced by Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and paperwork for importing the scanners. AAI has increased the number of standalone scanners manned by airline security at the terminal, but sometimes these are not enough to reduce waiting time. A senior official of AAI said that inline scanning machines would be installed by March or April. “Tenders were awarded long ago and we are awaiting machines from abroad. That is taking time,” said an official.
The domestic terminal handles 25,000 passengers a day. An airline official said the number of people travelling domestic with cabin baggage alone is increasing but that is not the case during holidays and weekends when a large percentage of the travellers are families who go on leisure trips, with heavy bags that need to be checked in.
The terminal registered an increase in number of travellers during the Christmas-New Year week and also during Pongal. This increased the number of bags handled by airline staff. The domestic departure terminal has six to seven baggage scanners. Doing away with these machines will also help free up space that could be used for other passenger facilities.
The proposed inline scanners will screen bags at multiple levels and comply with new security regulations issued by BCAS.
28/01/19 Times of India
To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline
Inline baggage scanners that do multiple scans of checked-in bags, enabling passengers to deposit their bags at the check-in counters, were supposed to be installed by March last year, but there is no sign of them yet. The problem is worse during the morning peak hours.
Airports Authority of India (AAI) attribute the delay in getting the machines to new specifications introduced by Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and paperwork for importing the scanners. AAI has increased the number of standalone scanners manned by airline security at the terminal, but sometimes these are not enough to reduce waiting time. A senior official of AAI said that inline scanning machines would be installed by March or April. “Tenders were awarded long ago and we are awaiting machines from abroad. That is taking time,” said an official.
The domestic terminal handles 25,000 passengers a day. An airline official said the number of people travelling domestic with cabin baggage alone is increasing but that is not the case during holidays and weekends when a large percentage of the travellers are families who go on leisure trips, with heavy bags that need to be checked in.
The terminal registered an increase in number of travellers during the Christmas-New Year week and also during Pongal. This increased the number of bags handled by airline staff. The domestic departure terminal has six to seven baggage scanners. Doing away with these machines will also help free up space that could be used for other passenger facilities.
The proposed inline scanners will screen bags at multiple levels and comply with new security regulations issued by BCAS.
28/01/19 Times of India
0 comments:
Post a Comment