JOIN USIn order to enhance passenger comfort, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has decided to cut security checks and frisking time at airports to almost half the present time taken.
The force has prepared a four-point new standard operating procedure (SOP) for its security personnel deployed at the country’s 59 civil airports to frisk and identify genuine travelling passengers and scan suspect baggage.
“We have decided to cut the security check time for fliers at airports by half. At present, our officials take 7-8 minutes to complete frisking and identification of passengers, but now we plan to cut it by half to about 4 minutes,” said chief of the CISF's airport security unit O P Singh. He said new modules and SOPs have been developed to enable CISF security men achieve this target.
“We have initiated a new profiling mechanism by which a security person intelligently identifies a genuine passenger from a fake or suspect one. Once that is done, the security personnel are being trained to quickly go through three details in the ticket, which is checking the correct flight number, date, time and the valid I-card of the passenger,” said Singh, an Additional Director General with the CISF.
Authorities of the force are particularly driven to undertake such measures after a survey they conducted among passengers at Indian airports found out that extended waiting time for security checks was troubling the most number of fliers in the country.
Singh said the new security protocols have been tested at the domestic and international terminals of the Indira Gandhi International Airport here with success, and from the coming week, the new training module will be imparted to all force personnel deployed under its airport security wing across the country.
“We just request fliers to keep a valid ticket in hand, or in case of a soft copy, they should show the original PDF attachment on their smartphones to the CISF official. We will ensure that they are cleared for flight in as less time as possible,” Singh said.