NEW DELHI: The number of air travellers in India could triple by 2037 and the country must urgently improve aviation processes to keep pace with the increased demand. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) on Wednesday issued a study on Indian aviation where the world’s fastest growing aviation market has got tips on how to handle the growing rush.
India is facing a crippling shortage of airport infrastructure. While air traffic has doubled in last five years, airport capacity has remained almost static. The biggest hubs like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore are completely choked. The runways at most big Indian airports cannot handle heavy aircraft movement. The terminals are bursting at seams with serpentine queues everywhere from entry point to security and immigration.
Accordingly, to cope with the massive growth the international agency has requested India to take steps like — doing away with stamping procedures at touch points and allowing mobile boarding passes; adopting automation in border control process, for both departure and arrival; adopting risk-based approach to aviation security instead of 100% pat down checks and allowing self drop for check-in bags. To be sure, India has already adopted some of the above steps like having complete paperless domestic boarding at some airports.
“IATA forecasts global passenger numbers will double in 20 years and India is even looking at trebling of passenger numbers by 2037 when some 50 crore people are expected to fly to, from or within India.… improving processes should be considered a primary solution as infrastructure capacity expansion cannot keep up with the speed of traffic growth. However, in most of Indian airports, a number of processes remain manual and are not so efficient, (like) requiring stamping on boarding pass at multiple touchpoints,” the IATA paper says.
The trade association for 290 airlines, representing 82% of total global air traffic, has requested the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), Bureau of Immigration (BoI) and Central Board of Indirect Taxes Customs (hereinafter Customs) to “support improved facilitation and security by adhering to global standards and best practices and by embracing new technologies and innovation in processes to handle this growth and meet passenger experience expectations”.
It has also stated point-wise suggestions for each airport process:
1. Do away with stamping procedures at touch points and allowing mobile boarding pass (MBP): “Stamping prevents passengers from using MBP, eliminating the mobile check-in option.… IATA expects this stamping procedure to be gradually removed once the Digi Yatra process is implemented in airports across India”.
2. Regulatory support for off-airport self-tagging options, such as home printed bag tag (HPBT) and electronic bag tag (EBT): “Hold baggage self-tagging and self-drop is a common self-service solution for many airlines and airports in the world today… HPBT and EBT will help to move part of the passenger processes off airport by enabling passengers to tag their own hold baggage before arriving at the airport,” IATA says.
3. Adopting automation in border control process, for both departure and arrival: “Automated Border Control (ABC) is recommended for improved aviation facilitation… IATA understands there is no ABC yet in India… IATA urges BoI to explore more immediate ABC implementation options (like) utilization of national ID cards as biometric token or requiring passengers to pre- enrol, and enabling ABC for only Indian citizens in its initial phase. IATA would like to further encourage BoI to be ready to cater to future ePassport rollout,” it says.
4. Alignment with global standards and best practices for passenger data programs: “Adoption of passenger data programs is accelerating… (Need) to follow international standards for Advance Passenger Information (API) and Passenger Name Record (PNR)… Currently in India, Excel CSV files is the only accepted format for API. This causes poor data quality due to errors made during the conversion process,” the paper says.
5. Adopting risk-based outcome-focused approach to aviation security: “IATA understands that in India there is a 100% pat-down of passengers being performed following the primary screening processes through the walk-through metal detector (WTMD)… it is recommended that the pat- down and/or secondary search be performed on a random basis for passengers who do not trigger the WTMD alarm. It is our understanding that airports in India are deploying body scanners from 2019,” it says.
6. Relocating hand luggage screening (for international arrivals) and adopting risk-based approaches instead of 100% screening: “IATA understands that there is 100% hand luggage screening performed right after the arrival border control in some airports in India. This process creates a bottleneck in the overall inbound flow and the situation will worsen with increased traffic… IATA recommends that the checks at such airports, should be relocated to after baggage claim while adopting random screening based on risk management,” IATA paper says.