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Mumbai's International airport, is first in India, to let you self-drop your check-in baggage
You have already checked in for your next flight and have printed out your boarding pass. But you still to undergo the hassle of joining a long queue at the airport, because you have a bag to check in. And the queue of passengers waiting to do the same is as long as the one of those who are waiting to collect their boarding pass. Familiar feeling? Maybe not for long—if you fly out of Mumbai.;
The Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport, is offering its passengers the option to self-drop their check-in baggage , by installing Scan&Fly bag drop units, developed by Switzerland-based aviation technology leader SITA.
The airport has deployed Scan&Fly units throughout the airport, allowing passengers that have already checked in online to quickly tag and drop their baggage before heading directly to the gate.
The units are available to passengers of Air India, Jet Airways, SpiceJet, Go and Indigo.
Scan&Fly allows the bag drop solution to be easily installed onto existing airport check-in desks, making use of its horizontal support frame, patented in Europe. This maximizes terminal space while leveraging the speed of self-service.
Says Rajiv Jain, CEO of Mumbai International Airport Ltd: “ MIAL would like to maintain and grow its position as the most innovative airport in India, using technology to optimize the current airport infrastructure and manage the rapid growth of passengers. SITA’s Scan&Fly fits the bill perfectly, allowing the airport to use proven self-service technology to speed up the baggage process while providing passengers with more self-service options along their journey.”
Adds Maneesh Jaikrishna, SITA Vice President, India and Subcontinent: “Travelers globally have shown a strong preference to use technology to help them through their journey. Travelers in India are no exception.”
Say goodbye to baggage tags
In another move to make air travel less cumbersome, the need to attach tags to hand baggage and get them stamped at security check, is being gradually done away with. From last week, it was not required in Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. Now that is being extended to, Patna, Nagpur, Guwahati, Lucknow, Jaipur, Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi.
Stamping boarding pass and hand baggage tags is something practiced only in India since 1992-- and the authorities realize only now that it adds hardly anything to the level of security and only creates needless bottlenecks.
