NEW DELHI: Standing in serpentine queues at check-in counters will soon be history for domestic air travellers. The government has asked airport operators to have kiosks where passengers can on their own drop in their check-in bags by filling details and putting up labels.
The concept is modelled on a leading low cost carrier installing self check-in kiosks where passengers print boarding cards on their own, without standing in queues. But this queue-buster is opted for mainly by those who have no check-in baggage. Now with baggage kiosks also on the way, domestic flyers may soon have no need to line up at check-in counters.
“We are working on the baggage self check-in machines. These would be installed at 10 to 13 of our major airports. Bengaluru airport will be experimenting this soon,” Airports Authority of India (AAI) chairman R K Srivastava told TOI.
Another senior government official said that the aviation ministry had asked AAI to procure these machines at the earliest. “The machines would weigh bags and indicate if the flyer has to pay excess baggage charges. The kiosk would have payment facility using cards. AAI-run Chennai and Kolkata airports would get these machines. The PPP metro airports can also do so,” said the official.
These machines would be in addition to check-in counters, so flyers who are not too tech-savvy can continue to get their boarding cards from the counters. Self check-in kiosks are among a series of modernization steps the aviation ministry is planning for flyers. It is planning to allow boarding cards on personal electronic devices like smartphones that will allow flyers to drop bags at kiosks and then straight proceed for security.
“There is one hurdle -of security check stamps on hand bag tags and boarding cards. Security personnel check for these stamps before allowing passengers to board flights. A way has to be found to do away with hand bag tags,” said an official.
In fact, some airports like Delhi’s IGIA have asked the government to do away with hand bag tags. “Very often the hand bag tags get torn off after passengers clear security. Then security sends flyers back from boarding gate to get the bag scanned again and to get a tag. This is a big problem at sprawling terminals like Delhi’s T3,” said an airline official.
