Hyderabad: RGIA sees limited action

Hyderabad: Domestic flight operations were resumed at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport on Monday after a break of two months due to Covid-induced lockdown. The airport handled about 20 departures and 19 arrivals during the day with an approximate passenger load of about 3000.

TruJet's 2T 623 was the first flight to take off from the GMR Hyderabad International Airport at 8.06 am with 12 passengers on board to Vidyanagar in Karnataka. Air Asia India I5 1576 was the first flight to land at 8.20 am from Bengaluru with 106 passengers bound for Hyderabad.

The airport handled flights from Bombay, Bengaluru, Delhi, Vidyanagar (Karnataka), Jaipur (Rajasthan), Raipur (Chhattisgarh), Kolhapur (Maharashtra), Jharsuguda (Odisha), Cochin (Kerala), Surat (Gujarat), Ranchi (Jharkhand), Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh), Belgaum (Karnataka), Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Chennai (Tamil Nadu) and Pune (Maharashtra). The flights connecting to these destinations were – TruJet, AirAsia India, IndiGo, Alliance Air, SpiceJet, Vistara and Air India.

However, chaos prevailed at the airport as many domestic flights were cancelled late in the night and there was no proper information to the passengers who converged at the airport from early in the morning as it was day one of the new contactless protocols to be followed like self-check-in facility, self-bag tag facility, scan & fly, etc. Many passengers had to wait in the lounge for long as they were told about the cancellation of flights after they had checked into the airport. The situation eased only towards the afternoon when some flights began operations.

Sajju Gangadharan, travelling by Indigo flight to Delhi, said, "The airlines were too eager to show pre-booking flight tickets from May 25. Mrinal Gupta, a passenger travelling by Air India, said, "My friends had booked an Air India flight from Hyderabad to Amritsar via Delhi. It was a connecting flight. When we reached the airport three hours prior as mentioned, the airport staff told us that the flights were cancelled. Now they were waiting at the airport for confirmation."

Chief Seceratry Somesh Kumar and other senior officials visited the airport and examined the arrangements and expressed satisfaction on the smooth handling by the airport staff.

All passengers at arrival and departure gates were scanned by thermal scanners as per the safety procedures with adequate social distancing. All cabs that brought the passengers to the airport were sanitised.

The GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (GHIAL) has taken a slew of measures with focus on a seamlessly contact-less boarding experience for passengers, including some stringent safety measures like availability of automatic hand sanitizer dispensers at various places, placing floor markers, staggered seating arrangements, allocation of entry gates and check-in islands for departure passengers to encourage compliance of social distancing norms and minimize human contact at the airport.