Digi Yatra to cover 38 airports in 2024, says aviation minister Scindia

New Delhi: Digi Yatra facility will be available at 25 more airports in 2024, Union Minister for Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia said in a press conference on Friday. The facility will be introduced at 14 airports in the first phase and another 11 airports in the second phase, all in the next year. 

Currently, Digi Yatra facility is available at 13 airports, catering to 85% of the country's domestic air passenger traffic. These include airports in New Delhi, Varanasi, Bengaluru, Vijayawada, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Lucknow, Jaipur, and Guwahati. 

Digi Yatra uses facial recognition technology to provide for contactless, seamless movement of passengers at various checkpoints at airports.

The minister underscored the lack of infrastructure, inadequate X-ray baggage inspection systems (XBIS), inordinate bunching of flights in peak hours and inadequate manpower on the ground are the key reasons for congestion in Indian airports, which became a major concern last year around the same time. 

To tackle congestion at airports, manpower, X-ray machines, departure entry gates, check-in counters and immigration counters have been increased compared to last year. CISF personnel at Indian airports have increased by 21% to 24,733 personnel, with the addition of 4,246 over the last 8-10 months. 

Major airports in the country saw a 33% increase in the XBIS systems and 49% for AAI airports. The check-in counters increased 24% to 312 from 213 across the 16 airports considered for expansion by the ministry last year. 

As part of long-term capacity, the ministry also came up with guidelines for airport operators specifying that space for business establishments and commercial lounges will be allocated only after adequate space required for passenger processing and other support services is earmarked. Also, any proposal for additional space for business establishments is subject to space availability to meet passenger facility requirements for projected future traffic growth. 

It also mandates straight emergency evacuation routes and passenger movement/circulation corridors to be provisioned considering minimum travel distance while allocating space for retail, duty-free and food and beverage (F&B) areas. This follows the dismantling of the reserve lounge at Terminal-3 of Delhi’s IGI airport in December, last year, to install additional baggage check machines. Likewise, several F&B and commercial outlets had to be moved to increase walking space for passengers clogging the airport. This resolved the situation this year, enabling streamlining of daily passenger traffic that rose to 4.67 lakh (as against last year’s 4 lakh). 

Planning is underway for the next summer and winter schedules, the minister informed. Passenger traffic estimates are being made which will lead to capacity expansion across airports in India. The next year will see terminal buildings in Lucknow, Guwahati and Patna while the new terminal 1 will be commissioned in Delhi soon. 

Full-body scanners yet to arrive, installation deadline pushed: BCAS Chief 

The deadline for installing full-body scanners and Computed Tomography X-ray (CTX) machines at certain airports will be extended, Zulfiqar Hasan, director general of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security informed the media on Friday citing “provisional issues”. They were originally to be in place by December 31.

"We expect the full body scanners and X-ray machines to come in May...," Hasan said, adding that both are expected to be installed at the Delhi airport by May next year. BCAS will be deploying the full body scanners in a phased manner.

Presently discussions are ongoing with various airport operators to address the installation challenges, Hasan informed. Once CTX scanners are in place, passengers will not have to remove their electronic gadgets from baggage during security checks at airports.