Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has dispensed with the practice of stamping hand baggage tags of international and domestic passengers departing from Tiruchi airport, as per a directive from the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, the regulatory authority for civil aviation security in the country.
The CISF that provides round-the-clock security and surveillance at the airport dispensed with this practice on a trial basis for a week from October 24 to 30 for domestic passengers. It was carried out to check how the system worked and a report was forwarded to the authority in New Delhi recently.
Security stamping of hand baggage tags provided by the respective airlines was done by the CISF personnel at the Security Hold Area.
The system was permanently withdrawn from Friday based on positive feedback from domestic passengers - that it was time saving, airport sources told The Hindu .
However, routine security procedures such as scanning of hand baggage of domestic and international passengers would continue at the Security Hold Area. This practice had already been withdrawn in other international airports in phases.
The fast growing non-metro Tiruchi airport has more international flights than domestic services. Five foreign carriers operate daily services to six overseas destinations located in South, South East and West Asia every day, while domestic flights are operated to Chennai.
Jet Airways and Alliance Air operate daily services in the Chennai-Tiruchi-Chennai sector.
The airport handled over 6.95 lakh international passengers during the first six months of the current financial year, according to Airports Authority of India statistics. Domestic passenger movement was a little over 60,000 during the same period.
