Keeping in line with the central government’s ambitious aadhaar project, the Bengaluru airport, also known as Kempegowda International Airport, has given a green signal to the initiatives leading towards making this airport fully aadhaar-enabled by the end of next year. The fully aadhaar enabled airport means that the passengers will be able to get into the airport just with a tap of their thumb and will be able to board the aircraft after verifying their biometric details.
The airport has already run a pilot of aadhaar based entry and boarding and the airport management has given a green signal to the implementation of aadhaar based entry and biometric-based boarding.
The airport authorities have issued an RPF (Request for Proposal). According to the RPF, the airport is expected to become the first smart-airport in the country to be equipped with aadhaar based entry system. Implementation of aadhaar in entry and boarding will make the process completely paperless and more efficient, saving users time that they spent waiting in security check lines and to get their boarding passes on the airport counters.
In its statement, BIAL (Bangalore International Airport Limited) stated that the aadhaar based system will allow the airport to become a smart, intuitive and seamlessly connected. Also, using the biometric or thumb verification, the average time spent on one user will drastically reduce to just 5 seconds and that will allow more users to pass through the same gate. Also, the whole process starting from entering into the terminal to getting into the aircraft will take just 10 minutes, compared to the 25-minute current average.
Hari Marar, Executive Director & President, BIAL said that the new process will provide seamless security and faster access to the terminal and it will also decrease the efforts needed for the validation process. Currently, the passengers need to provide their identification at a number of points for manual verification, which often results in long queues.
Marar also added that BIAL is considering March 30th, 2018 as a deadline to enable the first phase, under which, the entry in Airport will be completely aadhaar based. Also, in the next phase, the airlines will be asked to get into the process and BIAL expects the complete implementation of the project by end of 2018.