To coincide with the 11th anniversary of the opening of Shamshabad airport, the GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited (GHIAL) on Saturday commissioned the Interim Domestic Arrivals Terminal (IDAT) at the airport.
SpiceJet SG 468 airline passengers flying from Tirupati to Hyderabad (arrival time: 05.32 p.m.) were the first to get an experience of the new and sprawling facility.
Spread across about 4,000 sq. mts in the air side, east of the existing Passenger Terminal Building (PTB), the IDAT is an exclusive Domestic Baggage Reclaim Concourse primarily serving the passengers arriving on aircraft, parked on remote stands.
The new facility offers four new baggage carousel belts of 45-metre length each, which will help speed up the baggage delivery process.
The facility is designed to handle almost 50% of the domestic arrival traffic, amounting to around 30,000 passengers daily.
A wide corridor with two 26-metre length inclinators connect the new concourse with the main Passenger Terminal Building.
The new facility would significantly increase total peak hour baggage handling capacity at the airport and give a major boost to passenger convenience. This facility is interim in nature till the expanded terminal becomes available for operations, a release of GHIAL said.
With this addition, Hyderabad International Airport now has a total of seven belts for domestic arrivals, including three in the existing domestic arrivals. Of them, one is used as swing catering to both domestic and international on a need basis. Incidentally, the Interim International Departures Terminal was opened in October 2018.
