KOCHI -- The Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL) will introduce 15 new aero-bridges, on a par with other Metro city airports in the country, at the new international terminal being built at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore, which would be completed this fiscal. According to V J Kurien, managing director,CIAL, the move is aimed at providing better facilities and connectivity to passengers inside the airport.
“We are planning to purchase 15 aero-bridges for easy and convenient transit of passengers from the terminal building to the aircraft and vice versa. At present, three are only five aero-bridges in the international terminal and the bulk order is being made by taking note of the leap to be made by CIAL in international passenger handling in the next 20 years, he said. At present the airport is the fourth largest in the country in terms of international passenger handling.
Besides, the move assumes significance in the wake of the Customs revelation that ground handling staff in the airport involved in the gold smuggling cases had misused the lack of enough aero-bridges inside the airport to source the contraband from international passengers when they were taken to the terminal by ferry buses inside the airport.
According to Customs officials, some aircraft have not been using this facility inside the airport. In such cases,the passengers would be ferried to the terminal by the ferry buses. Taking advantage of this lacuna, the carriers used to place the gold consignment inside the bus or hand over the contraband to the ground handling staff deputed at the airport buses. They would then take the contraband to domestic bay where no Customs officials were posted and later take the consignment out of the airport though the staff gate of the domestic terminal.
Meanwhile, the airport officials said that, once the work on the new terminal is completed and opened for air traffic, the existing international terminal will be opened to domestic traffic and the present domestic terminal will be set aside for either chartered flight handling or shopping complex purposes,the officials said. The airport has clocked a record footfall of 25,09,781 passengers in the first quarter (April-July) of this fiscal.
Source: The New Indian Times
