In post-Covid-19 world, Aarogya Setu app will be your passport to enter airports

Hyderabad: Patience. This will be the key quality you need to display when you arrive at the airport to board a flight to your destination, as and when the domestic flight services are resumed across the country.

As the Centre prepares for staggered resumption of flights anytime after May 18, all stake holders involved in the airport management have taken up a slew of measures to ensure social distancing, safety and will have a 'zero contact' system in place. In a nutshell, it will be ''minimum touch and minimum exposure'' for both the passengers and the airport staff.

To begin with, passengers need to arrive at the airport two hours before the flight and ensure download of ''Aarogya setu'' App on their phones. Next, they will have to fill up self declaration forms regarding health status and any previous covid-19 related isolation or infection. While face masks will be compulsory, passengers should preferably bring printed or electronic boarding passes with them.

Upon reaching the airport, passengers will have to stand in queues outside the departure gate in boxes or circles drawn on the floor at a distance of 4-6 feet from each other. There will be hand sanitizer kiosks where everyone will have to sanitize their hands.

On approaching the gate, the body temperature of the passengers will be checked with a distant thermal meter or screener. Anyone having more than normal temperature, will be promptly asked to leave the queue and be referred to the health desk.

''The personnel of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) who check the IDs with the ticket details will be wearing the personal protection equipment PPE suits. They will have face masks shielded by a plastic sheet across the face. But they no longer will be doing the one-to-one checks.There will a camera to which the passenger will have to present his/her ticket and ID and the CISF personnel will see the enlarged version on a tablet or webcam from a distance of a tleast one metre or across a see through plastic cover, crosscheck the details and usher the passenger ahead,'' CV Anand, IG Airport sector II, west central south India, CISF, told Deccan Chronicle.

The passengers are likely to be allowed to carry only one piece of check-in luggage of less than 20 kgs and no hand baggage will be allowed at all, except hand sanitizer bottle weighing less than 350 ML, essential medicines and absolute essentials in a small pouch/bag. However, the final orders are awaited on this aspect.

Further, the check-in kiosks will not be used. At the check-in counter ,the airlines will be using alternate counters only so as to maintain safe distance. At unmanned counters, in order to maintain zero touch, the ticket scanner, boarding pass printer,and bag tag printer will be placed facing the passenger for him/her to collect the printout themselves.

If manned, counters will have glass separations.The passenger who is waiting in predrawn boxes/circles,upon call, will approach the counter, show the ticket under the scanner, place his/her baggage on the weighing belt. The airline staff will issue the boarding pass and bag tag which are printed and ejected out by the printer which will have to be collected by the passengers who is expected to place them on the baggage himself. In case of any issue ,the airline staff will be at hand to help and guide.

At the pre-embarkation security check area, the passenger will have to line up in pre-drawn circles or boxes, voluntarily remove all metallic items and place them in the tray. Special focus will be laid by the CISF Frisker, watching any beeps emanating from the Door Frame Metal Detectors as the passenger walks through.

''There shall be no stamping of boarding cards henceforth and they will be digitally monitored by well placed HD CCTVs for this purpose. The CISF personnel who will frisk passengers will be wearing a PPE suit, his Hand Held Metal Detector will be attached to small rod/pole for frisking.The passenger will asked to turn around for frisking on the back side .Women passengers will be similarly frisked in the ladies line/box,'' said Anand.

Once past the the security check, the passenger will be able to sit in prearranged, marked seats at the boarding gates or even in the eateries and shops.The order for food will be through contact-less menu-ordering-payment methodology and its delivery also will be at designated points /seats in sealed tamper proof packaging.

A similar socially distanced queue, checking at boarding gates by CISF/airline staff will be done. Boarding will be done one hour before departure and not in a rushed manner.

Inside the aircraft,the passengers WILL BE greeted by PPE clad air hostesses and the sanitizer will be offered first up. Serving of food on flight will be only in prepackaged boxes and minimum contact principle will be followed throughout the duration of the flight.

It is learnt that the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security along with the CISF, Airport Authority of India and various airlines are still working on the finer aspects.

''The CISF, alongwith the airport operator, will be playing a key role in airport functioning in the post corona scenario. In view of the infections spreading to the CISF personnel on touch point duties, our entire focus will be on based on the principles of minimum touch and minimum exposure for both the staff and the passengers,'' said CV Anand.

He said that contact-less and touch free processes, leveraging technology have been developed by the various airport managements throughout the country ,as per the resources available with them.

''The past two months of lock down have been spent in keeping the CISF staff physically fit and mentally alert and to take precautions in every duty post and living barracks/accommodation,'' Anand added.