Finally, Chennai airport’s domestic terminal has got four Inline Baggage Screening (ILBS) scanners, which will reduce the amount of time passengers have to wait to get their baggage screened. Up until now, passengers have had to lift their baggage and have it screened through a stand alone X-Ray machine, a process that was very time consuming.
Officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) said they began operating the four machines early on Monday morning and they have been working fine so far. “This will definitely ease congestion at the domestic terminal to a great extent during the peak hours every day, from 5 a.m. till 7 a.m., when several thousand passengers travel out of the domestic terminal. Usually, passengers have to wait for quite sometime in the morning to first get their baggage checked through these standalone X-Ray machines and now, all they have to do is go to the airline counter and simply leave the baggage in the machine. This will save time for them,” an official said.
Only recently, new upgraded inline scanners were installed in the departure hall of international terminal as well. But passengers need to be informed by airline staff is that they should not be carrying liquids or power banks in their check-in baggage. “We see a lot of first-time travellers on domestic flights. They may not be aware of such rules. So far, when passengers were putting in their baggage through the standalone X-Ray machines, the staff would immediately alert them and remove it from the baggage. But now, since it is inline scanners, if passengers don’t know these rules, their baggage might be taken out at the end and they will be called by the staff and they can even miss their flight. So, airline staff must ensure that they warn passengers in advance,” he added.
Officials said they will continue monitoring the machines for a while to check if there are glitches and fix them immediately, in case they emerge.
