How can we be more flyer-friendly, CISF to ask passengers at eight big airports through October

NEW DELHI: In a bid to get more flyer-friendly, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) will conduct "passenger feedback" surveys at eight major airports — including all the metros — from October 1 to 30, 2017. The airports covered by this survey "to assess the performance of personnel and quality of security services being rendered by the CISF" include Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Cochin and Guwahati.

"Passengers would be provided a small paper questionnaire. Apart from four parameters — feeling of being safe and secure; waiting time at security inspection; thoroughness of security inspection and courtesy and attitude to help; response of initiative for removal of baggage tag stamping at airports is also included in the questionnaire. The questionnaire is also related to how the passengers want the security personnel to behave and their expectations at airports," said Hemendra Singh, CISF's assistant inspector general and spokesman.

A committee has been formed at all the eight airports to evaluate the survey. The survey reports will be scrutinized for taking further action. "Feedback samples collected would help to identify the strength and the weaknesses, if any, in service deliverance and to grade the services of CISF. Suggestions / observations by passengers will be analysed and worked upon to improve our services. It will also identify problems faced by travellers and (help find) possible solutions to them," said Singh.

CISF had last done such a survey in 2013 at all the 59 airports under its security cover, where the overall rating of CISF was 4.49 out of 5 points on four parameters. Recently, CISF has done away with the practice of stamping and tagging of passengers' hand baggage at 17 airports as part of making air travel easy.