The latest notification will provide huge relief to passengers and protect passengers from discomfort in case of flight delays.
Big Relief To Passengers: In the recent past, there were reports that many flights were delayed by a few hours to about 12 hours and even more. As a result, the passengers on board had no choice but to remain inside the aircraft where they faced immense discomfort due to congestion, suffocation, lack of fresh air, and lack of water and food.
One of the flights was marked out as the passengers received some food that they had to consume sitting on the tarmac. The images and videos of that moment went viral globally.
But now, passengers will be able to deboard a plane and move to the departure area if case their flight gets delayed due to poor weather, as per the latest airline instruction issued by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BACS) on March 30.
The new guidelines have been brought into practice to minimize and completely stop the cumbersome, uncomfortable situations for the passengers who are subjected to great difficulty in case of flight delays and getting stuck in aircraft for long hours after boarding.
Senior IPS officer, Zulfiquar Hasan, who is the Director General of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) said on Monday, “Airport operators have to make arrangements for the infrastructure, including for screening, for implementing the guidelines.”
He said the decision on deboarding the passengers will be taken by the airlines and security agencies concerned. If the airline does not deboard the passengers on their own, the security personnel at the airport will monitor and will ask them to do so after analysing the situation, he added.
The new arrangements might face a few technical as well as practical challenges of deboarding the passengers as airlines avoid deboarding the passengers because only when doors are closed the flights are placed on the departure queue.
On the issue of luggage, Zulfiquar Hasan said in case of the aircraft change after passengers have boarded, the baggage will be shifted directly from the existing plane to the new one and the passengers will be allowed to come to the boarding area of the departure terminal.
To reduce the time for passengers stuck in aircraft and then go through the whole check-in process again, airports will see a rollout of full-body scanners where annual passenger traffic is more than 5 million.
The new rule has come into effect after the BACS imposed fines totaling Rs 1.80 crore on IndiGo and Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) for passengers having food on the tarmac due to several incidents of flight delays reported in January.
In another incident, a passenger on an IndiGo Delhi-Goa flight assaulted a pilot after the passengers on the plane waited for hours before the take-off and that passenger reportedly asked the airline to deboard him.
(With agency inputs)