Hyderabad, Jun 23 (IANS): Hyderabad International Airport is taking stringent measures to comply with Covid protocols to ensure safe flying.

As the number of Covid cases are gradually coming down across India and the states are relaxing lockdown rules, GMR-led Airport has said that it is geared up in its fight against the pandemic to give a safe and seamless passenger experience.

Surveillance teams with the help of the Telangana state police are assisting the airport officials on the adherence to Covid protocols.

Random checks are conducted to ensure compliance and penalties are imposed on violators. In addition to this, 20 officials of GMR Hyderabad International Airport Limited (GHIAL) were appointed as Special Police Officers (SPOs) to safeguard and help in the enforcement of Covid-19 safety guidelines.

These special officers have the authority to impose penalties on passengers, visitors and staff who do not follow the Covid-19 safety guidelines within the airport premises.

Awareness signages are displayed across various locations of the airport on precautions and sanitization methods that everyone needs to take about Covid.

In order to avoid close contact and crowding at the counters, passengers are encouraged to check-in at home or use self-service facilities such as self-check-in facility, self-bag tag facility, etc.

The airport has deployed self-check-in kiosks, as per social-distancing norms across the airport forecourt area and at check-in halls for a contact-less boarding experience. These check-in kiosks are enabled with a touch-less technology which is QR code friendly and helps in the completion of the check-in process, print out of boarding card and baggage tags for bag drop in no time.

GHIAL said it has taken a slew of measures with focus on a seamlessly contactless boarding experience for passengers, including some stringent safety measures viz. thermal scanning of every departing passenger, the availability of automatic hand sanitizer dispensers at various places, placing floor markers, staggered seating arrangements, remote information desk where passengers queries will be answered without physical presence, allocation of entry gates and check-in islands for departure passengers to encourage compliance of social distancing norms and minimize human contact at the airport.

GHIAL is the only airport in the country that already has an advantage of a paperless e-boarding facility for all domestic travellers. The E-boarding solution is quite unique as it fully eliminates the need to manual stamping of boarding cards.

The passengers can take advantage of the E-boarding system to travel using electronic boarding passes stored on their mobile phones. All boarding gates have contactless E-boarding gates with boarding card scanners, which will help the passengers to just flash their boarding cards to verify flight details and once done, they can proceed to board the aircraft. This E-boarding facility is now being extended to international travellers also.

"In line with the Government of India's mandatory Covid Protocols, Hyderabad International Airport is taking rigorous measures to ensure passenger safety. While the airport is geared up with all safety norms in place, we request all passengers to extend their cooperation and support in adherence to correct usage of face masks, maintaining social distancing and to comply with all the necessary Covid related travel documents," said GHIAL spokesperson.