look news india
A very relieving and big news has come out for the air passengers of the country. To eliminate the inconvenience and wastage of time faced by passengers during security check at all major and domestic airports in India, Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and Airports Authority of India (AAI) have decided to implement a state-of-the-art technological system. It is often seen that during security checking at the airport, passengers have to find plastic trays to keep their laptop, mobile, belt, jacket and hand bag in the X-ray machine. Many times, due to non-availability of trays or their shortage, there is chaos and huge crowd gathers in the security hold area. To uproot this old and traditional problem, ‘Automatic Tray Retrieval System’ (ATRS) machines are now being installed at all the airports across the country.
Automatic tray return machines work on a very modern and automated conveyor belt system. Under this new system, when a passenger reaches the security point, he will automatically find clean and empty trays available at the entry point of the X-ray machine. As soon as the passenger places his luggage (laptop, electronic device, bag) in the tray and advances it into the X-ray scanner, after the completion of the luggage checking, the empty tray will automatically return to the starting point from the lower or parallel part of the belt. With this process, passengers will not have to go to the other end of the X-ray machine to pick up the tray or wander here and there in the checking area to search for an empty tray. This entire process will be completely unmanned and automated, reducing the checking time to less than half.
According to Civil Aviation Ministry officials, during festival and holiday seasons, long queues of passengers form at busy airports like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Lucknow, Varanasi, Kolkata and Chennai. Often the extra time taken in security checking becomes the main reason for flight delays and dissatisfaction of passengers. With the installation of Automatic Tray Retrieval System (ATRS), there will be a huge increase of 30 to 40 percent in the number of passengers checked per hour (throughput). Apart from this, the high-capacity CCTV cameras and sensors installed in this system will also increase the efficiency of Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel in identifying suspicious goods manifold. If any suspicious item is found in any tray, the system will automatically send that tray to a separate rejection lane, due to which the checking of other normal passengers will continue smoothly without any interruption.
In the first phase of this ambitious scheme of the government, integration of ATRS machines is being completed in all the security bays of major and metro airports of the country (like Indira Gandhi International Airport Delhi, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport Mumbai and Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru). After this, in the second and third phase, these automatic machines will also be installed in all the Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities of the country (like Chaudhary Charan Singh Airport of Lucknow, Jaipur, Bhopal, Patna, Guwahati and Indore). This step will not only bring punctuality in take-off times of flights, but will also help in bringing India’s civil aviation sector at par with world-class safety standards and modern passenger amenities.
This inclusion of modern technology is going to completely change the experience of millions of air travelers. Elderly people, women and passengers traveling with children will get maximum relief from the hassle during security check. The Airport Authority believes that as the number of air passengers in the country is increasing at a record pace, digitization and automation of infrastructure is the need of the hour. This decision of automatic tray return machines will not only strengthen passenger centric services but will also give a smart and modern identity to Indian airports.