Cash transactions for various airport charges by non-scheduled flights landing at the international airport in Thiruvananthapuram have become history with the commissioning of a GPRS-enabled Electronic Data Capture (EDC) terminal on Monday.
With this, the non-scheduled airlines landing at the airport can remit the airport charges to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) round the clock through credit, debit, or corporate cards.
Work simplified
Till now, flight handlers and pilots of aircraft landing here unexpectedly were required to carry huge amounts of cash to make the payments. Often, Air Traffic Control personnel had to collect the money, and it was laborious for them to complete the formalities.
G. Asok Kumar, Joint Secretary, Civil Aviation, commissioned the EDC at a function at the AAI office in the presence of Rajesh Bhandari, Executive Director, Finance, AAI, and V.N. Chandran, Airport Director.
The facility will reduce the workload of the AAI personnel as it will help check fake currency and enable transactions in a more transparent manner and in real time. The EDC will be with the finance wing of the AAI here.
Mr. Chandran said the facility would be extended to scheduled airlines later.
The EDC is a point-of-sale terminal for submitting and validating credit card transactions to a merchant account provider, or some other credit card transaction processor.
An initiative of the Union Civil Aviation Ministry, the EDC was commissioned at Juhu in Mumbai and Dabolim in Goa in the first phase.
