With a slew of reconfiguration of work, the Airports Authority of India has taken steps to increase the passenger capacity of the new terminal building at Madurai airport to handle 850 passengers.
Among them are increasing the number of check-in counters and the immigration counters.
The new terminal building with 17,560 sq. m. of space was designed to handle 250 passengers per hour on arrival and departure when it was inaugurated in 2010.
However, with the number of flights increasing since then and footfall of passengers increasing, there arose the need for providing additional space. The airport handled 11 lakh passengers in 2022-23 and 14 lakh in 2023-24.
Even when construction of additional terminal building was doing rounds, the AAI officials decided to expand the facilities at the terminal building. “The immigration counters which were located on the ground floor has been moved to the first floor,” Airport Director, P. Muthu Kumar, told The Hindu.
After shifting the immigration counters, the additional space on the ground floor had been used to increase the number of check-in counters to 28 from 16.
Simultaneously, the number of immigration counters has been increased by four. Now, 16 immigration counters are available to handle the international passengers. Flights to three international destinations of Singapore, Dubai, and Sri Lanka are operated from Madurai. These facilities would result in swift clearance of passengers at the check-in and immigration counters.
The officials have also planned to increase the number of x-ray machines to scan the baggage. The number of scanners for domestic passengers has been proposed to be increased to four from two. Similarly, it would be increased to three from the existing two for international passengers.
While all the civil and electrical work have been completed, procurement of x-ray scanners and their installation was likely to take some time. “We propose to provide one more entry for passengers at the terminal building to reduce their waiting time outside,” Mr. Muthu Kumar said.
Published - September 30, 2024 09:51 pm IST
