The Self Bag Drop kiosks at the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) here has crossed the half-a-million passengers mark. The kiosks were introduced in 2018, arguably for the first time in the country to accelerate baggage transactions and reduce check-in queues at the airport.
On average, nearly 2,500 passengers avail this facility each day. The Air.Go fully-automated Self Bag Drop machines, developed by Materna IPS, are currently available for passengers flying with Air Asia and Spice Jet. This would be expanded to more airlines in the future.
KIA is the first in the country to introduce a large deployment of fully automated baggage drop-off units, according to the Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL).
How it works
The Self Bag Drop employs a two-step approach. A passenger first prints a boarding pass and an eezee-tag (bag tag) at a self-check-in kiosk. Once tagged, the passenger will go to the bag drop machine, scan the boarding pass to initiate the bag drop process.
The bag will be measured, weighed, scanned and automatically fed into the baggage handling system. In case of excess baggage, the passenger is directed to a hybrid counter to complete the check-in and payment.
Coriander leaves
Creating a record on the cargo front, as many as 5,620 tonnes of fresh coriander leaves were sent out from KIA between July and September 2019. This marked an unprecedented 70% growth over the same period last year, according to the Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL).
The lemony flavoured leaves were sent out to 13 States besides Sri Lanka. The top cities to which coriander was transported were Delhi (2,926,886 kgs) and Kolkata (1,218,673 kgs). Carriers that transported the cargo were Indigo, SpiceJet, GoAir, AirAsia India, Air India and Vistara, BIAL said.