The Airports Advisory Committee (AAC) has suggested the introduction of ‘Digi Yatra’, a facial recognition technology, to make terminal entry and security clearance at the airport seamless, hassle-free, and paperless, apart from the revival of flights from Visakhapatnam airport to various international destinations.
The committee met under the chairmanship of Visakhapatnam MP M.V.V. Satyanarayana at Visakhapatnam airport on October 4 (Wednesday).
Airport Director S. Raja Reddy submitted a report on the growth and future plans of the airport. He said that the flights from Visakhapatnam to Hyderabad, New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru had he maximum occupancy of 90% while those bound to Chennai and Kolkata reported over 80% occupancy during this financial year.
Cargo operations
The AAC members suggested that more flights be added to each of these destinations. Mr. Raja Reddy said that air cargo operations, which were presently handled by IndiGo, were tendered to Omega Enterprises for all inbound and outbound air cargo operations from November 10.
International air cargo operations were also discussed in the meeting. The airport Director said that this facility was awarded to Allied Services Company Limited, a subsidiary of Airport Authority of India (AAI). They are likely to start operations in a month as all the required infrastructure is already in place.
The AAC members requested the airport Director to initiate discussions with airline operators to restart flight operations to Dubai, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, which were withdrawn during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Satyanarayana agreed to take up the issue with the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Union Ministry of Defence. He also agreed to take up the issues pertaining to reducing the shutdown time to undertake resurfacing of the runway.
The AAC members sought that the downtime for runway maintenance, which was proposed between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m., should be between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. to facilitate the operation of the Scoot flight to Singapore and also other late night and early morning flights.
Pre-paid taxi service
They also sought the revival of the pre-paid taxi service at the airport, which was withdrawn during the COVID-19 pandemic. The airport Director said that the city police were looking into the issue, and the facility was expected to start in 10 days.
AAC members K. Kumar Raja, D.S. Varma and O. Naresh Kumar sought the provision of an additional entry from the National Highway to the airport to ease traffic congestion at the entry and exit from the highway. They also sought measures for improving the Airport Service Quality (ASQ) Q2 ranking of the airport from the present 66 to the top 30 global rankings in the first phase.
