Aadhaar-synced check-in facility at 7 airports soon

New Delhi, March 23

Air passengers will have seamless check-in facility at select airports in the country. Aadhaar card-embedded biometrics of passengers will be synced, allowing them to just scan the barcode on the ticket and gain check-in, Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia told the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

Seven airports of Pune, Kolkata, Vijayawada, Varanasi, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad have been listed, Scindia said while replying to debate on Demand for Grants. “This new system will reduce waiting time by 30-40 per cent. At present, there are check-in queues at airports,” he said.

On the expansion of new airports, he said the one at Halwara, located west of Ludhiana, would be ready by March 2023. This is a joint venture between the Punjab Government and Airports Authority of India. A new terminal building at Srinagar will be built at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore, while capacity expansion underway at Leh airport will be done by August 2023.

Scindia said the airline sector was on a revival mode with 3.82 lakh passengers travelling daily by airlines in the last seven days and hoped that the total passenger traffic would rise to 40 crore by 2023-24.

The number of air passengers was 14.5 crore in 2018-19. The traffic fell to 8.38 crore in 2021 due to the pandemic.

On allegations of disinvestment of six airports, Scindia said, “There is no sale. We have just leased six airports. The revenue from these airports was around Rs 550 crore per annum. The lease will earn Rs 904 crore.” —