Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) at Shamshabad here continued to have limited departures of 20 and 19 arrivals for the second successive day after the domestic flights were allowed to operate on Tuesday. The airport handled about 2,500 passengers for both arrivals and departures. During usual times before the shutdown, the airport was clocking a double digit growth handling up to 60,000 passengers daily and more than 500 flights, domestic and international.
Indigo 6E 732 was the first departures flight which took off to Lucknow from here at 4.46 a.m. with 45 passengers on board while Indigo 6E 587 was the first arrivals flight of the day, which landed at 01.01 a.m. from Pune with 108 passengers. All arriving and departures passengers are being scanned by thermal scanners at both arrivals and departures as per the safety procedures with adequate social distancing enforced for everyone.
Unlike the first day, passengers arriving to take the flights seem to have been better informed of the status of their flights and the airport too was not crowded as it was in the early hours of Monday. By afternoon, about 10 flights took off to various destinations while 10 more flights arrived here at the completely sanitised terminals with passengers, airlines and airport personnel covered in masks, face shields, gloves and other COVID-19-induced safety paraphernalia.
In order to avoid close contact and crowding at the counters, passengers are being encouraged to check in at home or use self-service facilities such as contact-less self-check-in facility, self-bag tag facility, scan and fly, etc.
Several flights showed ‘cancelled’ status due to the Government stipulation to scale down the daily numbers. "Passengers had already booked their tickets once it was announced that the flights will begin but got the cancellation messages after the schedules reduced. Some airlines are giving a credit line for a year to travel instead of providing refund," said senior officials of the industry, pleading anonymity.
Domestic asymptomatic passengers arriving here have to give an undertaking for a 14-day home quarantine while those having symptoms of the virus will be taken to the isolation rooms and later to the government-mandated health facility, they added.