International flyers spend up to two hours at immigration, baggage belts

CHENNAI: If you are taking a long flight to Chennai from abroad, your travel, or travail, will not end after touchdown. Long queues at immigration counters and commotion at the conveyor belt to collect luggage await you.
International flyers have complained that they have to wait between 45 minutes and two hours to complete immigration at the airport. Though adequate counters are available, they are not always manned.

“Immigration and baggage clearance are major issues. Baggage delay is much more than the time taken at the immigration counter. After spending time at the immigration, passengers have to wait at the conveyor belt for 40 minutes or more,” said Air Passengers Association of India national president D Sudhakara Reddy.

“It took me 45 minutes to get bags when I returned from Colombo recently. The flying time was one hour and 20 minutes. We are getting complaints from passengers about delays at immigration and baggage delivery, especially during midnight,” Reddy said.

The international arrival terminal handles around 10,000 passenger a day, most of them at night. For almost a year now, passengers are being held up. Airports Authority of India (AAI) said it had requested for more manpower.

With little or no relief, passengers often take to social media to vent their ire. Dhananjayan, a national award winning writer and film critic, tweeted recently: “The biggest challenge #ChennaiAirport faces is immigration & baggage arrival. Look at the mess of returning passengers - made to wait for 45 minutes & then wait for luggages to come for another 45 minutes. When will our Airports improve? @jayantsinha ji kindly look into this”

Reddy said Hyderabad and Bengaluru airports do not face such congestion. “They manage the crowd well. They have the personnel,” he said.

When another passenger tweeted, “Immigration is one of the worst in the world. Indian citizens 500 people- 5 counters , foreigners 50- people-5 counters. This is the only city where foreigners are treated better than local citizens”, AAI responded from its handle, “The Immigration counters were revamped recently for convenience of passengers. However, we will raise this concern with Immigration unit in airport.”

An official at the Chennai airport said Dubai airport, which handled 81million passengers last year, had a ‘flexi system’ to manage the crowd at the immigration. Additional counters are manned when there is a long queue or when immigration checks take time.

Sources at the city airport said the immigration department opened additional counters when the crowd swelled. “But these counters are inadequate. Immigration should speed up the process of clearing passengers. Though passports are scanned electronically and all data about passengers pops up at the screen, staff at the counter tries to interview passengers. This takes time,” said an official.

After there were repeated complaints about congestion at the immigration clearance area of the arrival terminal, the counters were rearranged and more were opened. There are more than 50 counters at the airport now. “But unexpected bunching of flights due to delays causes long queues at the immigration. This hits baggage handling,” an airport official said.