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Airport Authority of India to get 219 X-ray machines for faster security checks
Delhi airport will have 24 new X-ray machines in the next few months, and the other machines will be installed in 70 government airports from February.
To ease congestion at security points in airports, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) is getting 219 new X-ray machines at a cost of ₹90 crore that will help in faster clearance of cabin baggage, officials said.
Delhi airport will have 24 new X-ray machines in the next few months, and the other machines will be installed in 70 government airports from February. “The (Delhi) airport currently has 19 machines,” an aviation ministry official said, seeking anonymity.
These new scanners will be capable of handling up to 550 bags per hour from around 350 bags at present. “For this, the conveyor belt speed has been increased from 18 cm per second to 30 cm per second. This is intended to reduce the heavy passenger rush at the frisking points, especially during peak hours,” the official said.
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Heavy congestion at Delhi airport in the peak winter travel season caused many passengers to miss their flights, forcing aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia to intervene and suggest solutions in December. Increasing the number of cabin baggage scanners was one of them.
“We have bagged an order to develop and deploy 219 X-ray baggage scanning machines (129 KritiScan 6040 Dual View and 90 KritiScan 100100 Dual View) across 70 airports all over the country, which have to be deployed within eight months at all the airports,” said Kapil Bardeja, CEO and co-founder of Vehant Technologies, the company that received the order from the AAI.
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“These X-ray machines provide a dual view of the scanned luggage, which will increase the possibility of identifying contraband inside the bags,” an AAI official said, declining to be named. “The support and service will be easily accessible to AAI as the machines are designed and manufactured in India under the Make in India initiative of the government. The software is developed in-house, which will further ensure the security of information.”
These machines, a second AAI official said, underwent trials at seven airports that included Kolkata, Agartala, Deogarh, Gwalior, Patna, Vizag and Udaipur.
The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security had earlier notified that new X-ray scanners installed in airports should be dual-view machines.
“The delivery of these machines began from this month, as one machine was delivered Juhu aerodrome. Machines to airports like Aurangabad, Jalgaon, Jammu, Srinagar and Jodhpur airports are set to be delivered in next month,” the second official said.
