Taking a flight? Soon, you may not need to get your boarding pass stamped

CISF has asked major airports to have 'express security check facility' for domestic passengers to reduce congestion at check-in and frisking area

To enhance travel experience of domestic passengers, three major airports might soon get rid of boarding pass stamping, enabling fliers to go straight to security checkpoints.

The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has asked Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai airports to carry out a pilot project for “express security check facility” for travellers with just handbags, according to a report in The Times of India

The head of airport security for CISF, MA Ganapathy, on July 18 had written to the CEOs of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore airports (DIAL,MIAL and BIAL respectively) to stop stamping of boarding cards of domestic flyers, the report said.

The doing away of stamping would help passengers save time and ease the travelling as during peak hours, the queue for stamping is usually large and passengers lose a lot of time to get clearance. Also, there is a lot of manpower required to manage operations.

The report quoted a senior CISF  official as saying MIAL "is very keen to do a pilot."

The Mumbai airport management is leant to have approached both CISF and Bureau of CIvil Aviation Security for the same.

The express security facility is proposed in the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) Terminal 2 for domestic fliers of Air India, Jet Airways and Vistara.

Technology will play a major part in the successful implementation of such a system. The surveillance will be done through CCTV network. The pre-embarkation security check (PESC) area will have high-definition CCTVs to capture clear images to make identification easier.

To get the access, passengers will have to scan the barcode on their boarding passes on the e-gate reader. Once authenticated with the airline's database, they will be able to enter. The gate will not open for International passengers.

Once a passenger has entered from the gate, CISF personnel will frisk and clear passengers without stamping their boarding pass, which will be scanned at each stage — entering, clearing and at the boarding gate. The access to subsequent stages will only be allowed once if the previous stages have been cleared.

The system will deny entry if the unique barcode on boarding card is used by someone else to enter the security check again.

In the last one year, the CISF and airport authorities have stopped stamping handbag tags at several airports. Hyderabad airport already has an e-boarding gate.

Stamping is done to fix responsibility as to who frisked a passenger and also to ensure that everyone is frisked before being allowed to board the plane.