Chennai airport to get sophisticated four-level inline baggage scanner

CHENNAI: Passengers travelling from the international terminal of the city airport will have to scan their luggage before checking in, as work on installing a new inline baggage scanning machine is all set to begin. Airports Authority of India (AAI) has installed five standalone baggage scanners at the terminal for passengers to scan the bags until the work to install the new four-level inline baggage scanner is completed. The work is expected to take three months.
The new inline scanners with CT X-Ray and CT scan system, which can detect explosives, have been procured as per the new security regulations introduced by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS).
An official said the machine, which is better than the old one, will provide a good resolution picture of the bags and will automatically divert bags with suspicious content to a manual checking area.
“The machine will do four levels of checks. The first two levels are automatic and do not require human intervention. In the third level, the machine will divert bags with suspicious content for security personnel to screen and those which need to be opened will be sent to the fourth level where the passenger is summoned,” he added.
The modification to the inline baggage scanner is part of the move to have new machines at international and domestic terminals. The machines and conveyors for both the terminals have arrived.
“We have decided to install the new machine first in the international terminal because the work is simpler. The old machine must be replaced with a new one and the conveyor that carries the bags through different levels of scanning needs to be removed and re-routed as per the new machine’s design. This work will take three months,” he said.
The airport authorities have not asked airlines to inform passengers to arrive early for scanning. However, airline officials feel that it might be better for passengers to arrive earlier to avoid long queues during peak hours. The international departure terminal handles around 9,000 to 10,000 passengers and 50 flights a day.
AAI will start installing a similar machine at domestic departure terminal after the work at international departure is completed. “This will be the first inline machine at the domestic terminal since the building was commissioned in 2013. It will take longer to install the machine in the domestic terminal because it has to be done from scratch,” he added.