The regular frisking of passengers before boarding the flights at Visakhapatnam international airport would be a thing of past as body scanners are planned to be introduced in the first phase.
No more frisking
According to the airport officials, the body scanners would eliminate the need for frisking and ‘walk through metal detectors’.
“The proposal is still in the preliminary stage. We expect that special teams will visit the airport for inspection soon,” airport Director G. Prakash Reddy told The Hindu on Sunday.
It may be mentioned that the Central government has made it mandatory for 84 airports across the country to install full-body scanners within a year and has already issued a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for their usage.
Technology matters
However, the move is not free of issues.
The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) has also mandated the use of privacy filters, following concerns over the body scanners generating naked images of passengers.
The scanners will produce only an outline of the passenger. These scanners use millimetre wave technology to prevent passengers from being exposed to harmful X-ray radiation.