12 Kolkata: DigiYatra at Kolkata airport, which enables passengers to travel without paper documents and breeze through choke points by leveraging facial recognition technology, has become extremely popular with frequent flyers. However, authorities at the airport are struggling to convince airline ground staff to use DigiYatra gates for passenger boarding.
An airport official told TOI that while the DigiYatra gates at the terminal entrance, as well as eight gates at security check-in, were being used, the gates at the boarding points were hardly used, with airline ground staff insisting on continuing with conventional boarding. "After the introduction of DigiYatra, the congestion eased considerably at both the terminal entry gates and security check. But boarding points remain a challenge, with queues persisting. The single-file boarding process takes 20-25 minutes. If DigiYatra gates are utilised, that will enable three flyers to be cleared for boarding at a time. This can potentially reduce boarding time to a third of what is required at present," the official said.
Between boarding gates 14 and 25, there are 12 DigiYatra gates and 16 non-DigiYatra gates. There are eight DigiYatra gates at the bus boarding gates between 101 and 108. However, according to sources, airlines hardly promote the DigiYatra channels exclusively for the registered passengers and ask them to queue up with non-DigiYatra passengers.
While IndiGo Airlines, which operates around 45% of flights from Kolkata airport, uses the gates infrequently, other airlines' staff have been shy of using the facility. They have their own arguments for the reluctance.
An airline official pointed out that the priority boarding programme offered against a payment would be difficult to implement if flyers are allowed to walk through DigiYatra gates. Others said the current system, which allowed zone-wise boarding — with those seated at the rear end of the aircraft being allowed to board first, followed by those in the middle and finally, flyers with seats in front — would be difficult to enforce if DigiYatra boarding gates were used. The zone-wise boarding prevents clogging of the aisle by passengers placing bags in the overhead compartments.
Having first been deployed at entry points and security checkpoints, DigiYatra implementation expanded to include boarding areas last year. The technology employs facial recognition systems to enhance airport procedures.
Airport officials said airlines can ask passengers with priority boarding passes to use the DigiYatra gates before calling out the zones and asking flyers to proceed. "There may be some attempting out-of-tu-rn boarding. But I don't think it will lead to chaos. We are regularly following up with all the airlines to ensure they use DigiYatra at boarding gates," said an airport official, adding that there were no such issues in bus boarding gates for ferrying passengers in coaches to aircraft parked in remote bays.