Hyderabad Airport Witnesses Six Fold Surge in Passenger Footfall Since Domestic Flight Resumption

The daily domestic passenger footfall at Hyderabad International Airport has gone up to 20,000, the airport operator said on Monday.

The number is over six times the passenger footfall of about 3,000 when the airport resumed commercial operations on May 26, after two months due to COVID-19 induced lockdown.

According to airport operator GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (GHIAL), the airport is now handling over 200 daily domestic air traffic movements, which is five times of about 40 air traffic movements taking place in the first few weeks of resumption of the domestic operations.

The airport has also restored close to 93 per cent of its domestic destinations having gained back 51 domestic destinations out of 55 pre-COVID domestic destinations.

The airport was handling 550 air traffic movements and about 60,000 passengers daily before Covid-19 induced lockdown came into effect in March.

Billed as the world’s third fastest-growing airport in the category of 15 million passengers in the world, it is one of the busiest airports in the country and the best-connected in the south and central India.

Meanwhile, the airport has developed a touch-less elevator control system based on infrared technology for passenger safety in view of the pandemic.

As part of the local engineering innovation for creating rapid solutions to complex problems, the developers have used an array of infrared sensors to detect the spatial position of the user’s fingers as they pass through the sensing plane.

The airport officials on Monday said they successfully executed a pilot project of turning an elevator at the departures level from traditional push-button controls to safer touch-less alternative heightening passenger safety.

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The users of that elevator can now wave their hands closer to the sensor to call the elevator at any floor they are standing. Once inside the elevator, they can point their finger towards a floor number as a command for a designated floor. The sensor can detect interaction from a distance of 0.1-10 cm from the button surface to enable users to make their selection with no physical contact.

With the successful culmination of the pilot project, the airport is going ahead with enabling all passenger elevators across the airport terminal building for this automation.

The airport is known for its many innovative technology-friendly and digital measures for passenger convenience and is also a fully e-boarding enabled airport. Other measures also include zero-contact and fully sanitised services like self-check-in kiosks, tech-enabled entry gates, self-baggage drop, virtual information desk for passengers, UV enabled disinfection of Automatic Tray Retrieval Systems (ATRS) at the pre-embarkation security screening zones, UV ovens at the retail outlets, touch-less drinking water fountains and inline disinfection of departure and arrival baggage trolleys, washrooms among others.