Tired of waiting at the airport for hours, after you check in for a flight? Well, there just might be some respite in store for you.
In what may end this kind of a misery for air passengers and help reduce congestion at airports, the government is likely to study the dwell-time of passenger traffic at airports. It is an offshoot of the dwell-time study for cargo at airports.
Carried out by an inter-ministerial group, with members from the civil aviation ministry and the Planning Commission, the study will also recommend measures to reduce the dwell-time for both cargo and passenger traffic.
?Passengers have to check in for flights about 3 hours before departure. We are trying to look at measures that will reduce this time by at least an hour,? a Planning Commission official said.
?As part of the study, we will mainly suggest streamlining the existing practices and also process re engineering wherever required,? he added. The study will be done on a country-wide basis with meetings with various stakeholders as well as keeping in mind international best practices. The group may also explore the option of introducing new systems to reduce passenger congestion such as common user terminal (CUTE) system.
The common user terminal system allows a common terminal to check in passengers from different airlines. For cargo traffic, it has already been announced that the free time given to exporters and importers as ?dwell time? for their cargo at the airports would be reduced to three days from the existing five days. It is likely to be implemented from October 1, 2007.
Sources said the government would reduce this by recommending more simplified measures for customs clearance.