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Amit Shah, Jyotiraditya Scindia review airport ops with eye on peak travel season
The meeting was attended by senior officials, including home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla.
New Delhi
Union home minister Amit Shah and civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Thursday reviewed passenger facilities at airports across the country, and directed officials of departments concerned with immigration, boarding and security to ensure ease of travel ahead of the peak summer travel season.
The meeting was attended by senior officials, including home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla, the top brass of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), and the director general of civil aviation (DGCA), among others.
People familiar with the discussions in the meeting said that Shah sought additional measures to be put in place at airports so that air travellers do not face inconvenience.
“Airport authorities and operators as well as the CISF, BCAS have been told to ensure that passengers do not spend a lot of time at the airport entry checkpoints, check-in gates, security and immigration zones. Steps to promote the use of Digi Yatra by passengers were also discussed,” said this officer.
A second officer said that the issues related to capacity building, security equipment, and customs were also taken up in the meeting.
Read: Today we have a bevy of passengers but shortage of aircraft: Jyotiraditya Scindia
In December, several airports across the country – especially in the national Capital – congested with people having to wait at least three hours to go through the security and check-in processes as air travel surged following a pandemic lull. At the time, Scindia met several stakeholders and rallied resources to help ease the situation.
During that period, the aviation minister had said, the number of passengers every day was near or over the 400,000 mark, which is close to record levels.
According to aviation consultancy CAPA India, the total air passenger traffic in India in the 2022-23 financial year was estimated to be 275 million, and the number is expected to rise to 320 million in the 2023-24 fiscal.
“India is forecast to see a rise to 700 million domestic passengers, and international airport pax to 160 million passengers by FY2030,” the CAPA India outlook, released in March, added.
Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January - March 2023 were 37.5 million as against 24.7 million during the corresponding period of the previous year, registering an annual growth of 51.70%.
In December last year, Delhi airport’s congestion made headlines as several passengers flooded social media with repeated complaints of them facing problems. People faced long queues and even sometimes missed their flights.
Soon after the chaos, Scindia visited Terminal 3 (T3) of the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport to share an action plan to mitigate the overall congestion at airports of the country, including Mumbai and Bengaluru.
