India is probably the only country where I had to deal with baggage tagging at the airport.
What is baggage stamping?
When you go through X-Ray control at the airport and you are being frisked to check that you are not carrying any items which are not allowed to be carried beyond the security like liquids, lighter, scissors, knives etc. In India, they put a baggage stamp on the bag to mark it checked. They check it a 2nd time before you board the aircraft if your baggage was marked or not.
What is the update?
Well in December, CISF made a trial run at metro cities to do away with baggage tagging for a week. They realized that there were few short falls and they couldn’t do away with the tagging.
As per this report from the Times of India:
We have got high definition cameras installed at Terminal 1 and 3 of Delhi Airport. The pre-embarkation security check area (where flyers queue up to get frisked) has got 36 and the security hold areas (where flyers are sent after frisking) have got 44 HD cameras. We have asked for interrupted power back-up support at all these seven airports. At some airports we have got revolving cameras fixed in addition to fixed cameras to minimize grey areas.
Now, baggage tagging is permanently being removed at 7 cities.
- Mumbai (BOM)
- Delhi (DEL)
- Kochi (COK)
- Bengaluru (BLR)
- Hyderabad (HYD)
- Ahmedabad (AMD)
- Kolkata (CCU)
Surprisingly, Chennai is not on the list for some reason. As Chennai is definitely one of the hub airports in India. Happy to hear that queues would move little faster at following airports during security check.
[…] the year 2017, Indian Airport Security decided that we might stop that practice. Those ancient techniques were stopped in 7 Airports in April. You could move through security faster […]