With Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Wednesday announcing that domestic passenger flights would resume in a “calibrated” manner from May 25, two months after the services were shut due to Covid-19, Hyderabad International Airport is ready with all AAI (Airports Authority of India) norms to welcome passengers.
The Hyderabad Airport, which is officially known as Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, has been handling Vande Bharat Mission flights for the last one month. The Daily Guardian visited the airport on Thursday and found it under tight security as it was handling “emergency evacuation” of foreign nationals. The security personnel stopped our car at all the five checkpoints of the airport.
They told that the foreigners would be evacuated from Hyderabad by special flights. Sanitizer bottles and cleaning devices could be seen everywhere at the premises. The airport authority had taken several measures to sanitise the entire area and ensured strict compliance of social distancing norms for the passengers and staff to minimise human contact. S.G.K. Kishore, CEO of Hyderabad International Airport Ltd, said, “In line with our motto of ‘Passenger is Prime’, the entire Hyderabad Airport family, including all our stakeholders, is working in the lockdown period to ensure that we have the right measures in place for ensuring passenger safety.”
To encourage compliance with social distancing norms, the airport is making some changes to the queuing arrangements, check-in halls, security checking areas and boarding gates. In order to avoid close contact and crowding at the counters, passengers will be encouraged to use self-service facilities such as self-check-in facility, self-bag tag facility, etc.