Keep Up the Pace

Yunus Dar | New Delhi

India’s domestic air passenger volume stood at 126.77 million in fiscal 2019, registering a growth of 14.27 per cent over the previous year, according to the data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The International Air Transport Association (IATA) last month released a report saying the number of India’s air travellers will triple by the year 2037. The report called for urgent improvement in air transportation infrastructure to handle the growing rush.

India is currently the world’s fastest growing aviation market, with air traffic registering a 200 per cent growth in the last five years. However, the shortage of airport infrastructure and the sluggish pace of modernisation of non-metro airports is posing a tremendous challenge for the country. Airports at metro cities are unable to handle the growing rush, with most airports unable to handle heavy aircraft movement. Terminals are registering unprecedented rush with huge queues at security checks, immigration desks and clearances.

In its paper titled ‘Aviation Facilitation and Security Priorities for Enhancing the Passenger Journey at Airports in India’, IATA said India needs to do away with stamping procedures at airports and allow mobile boarding pass (MBP), adopt automation for both departure and arrivals, adhere to global standards for advance passenger information, relocate hand luggage screening (for international arrivals) and adopt a risk-based approach instead of 100 per cent screening transmission.

The paper argued that improving processes should be considered a primary solution as infrastructure capacity expansion cannot keep up with the speed of traffic growth. However, in most Indian airports, several processes remain manual and are not so efficient, e.g. requiring stamping on boarding pass at multiple touch points, added the report.

Airports Council International (ACI) World, which asseses the quality of service at airports globally, revealed the winners of its world-renowned Airport Service Quality Awards in March 2019. India’s Kempegowda International Airport, Bangalore, won the first ever ASQ Arrivals Award, based on the new Arrivals Survey – the first airport in the world to win both a Departures and an Arrivals award. ACI’s Airport Service Quality (ASQ) is the only globally-established programme that provides objective measurement and benchmarking for airports.

The ASQ Departures programme measures passengers’ satisfaction across 34 key performance indicators. Biju P