Baggage delays at Chennai airport prove irksome

Chennai: With several aircraft being forced to park away from the domestic terminal due to space crunch, baggage delays are a perpetual problem at Chennai airport. Even when flights land on time, passengers have to wait for an additional 20 odd minutes before they can head out of the terminal.

Damanjeet Singh, who arrived in Chennai on a late night SpiceJet flight from Pune said, “I have been waiting for more than half an hour for my baggage but it still hasn’t come. Most of us were left restless and wasting around 20 minutes.” Damanjeet, who works as an IT professional and travels to the city every three to four months, also reckons it is a persistent problem which needs to be dealt with.

A staffer of SpiceJet who handles baggage said that whenever baggage is unloaded from the old airport side it leads to a delay. There are 31 night parking aircraft, which come here overnight and depart early morning. “But we do not have enough space in the domestic apron and the number of bays is less whereby some of these aircraft are then taken to the old apron towards the cargo. So baggage from those aircraft is diverted to the old apron which will take extra time and it is unavoidable,” an airport official said.

With regard to baggage handling the official pointed out that every aircraft has its own baggage handlers who are also responsible for the delays. Airport Authority of India (AAI) maintains the facility but the baggage handling part is with the airlines.  

However, he admitted to the fact that on the domestic side there is some spill over, which goes towards old airport leading to extra distance and leading to extra time taken.

“Since there are 31aircraft and there are not so many parking bays it does lead to a spillover of 3 or 4 aircraft,” he said. The main problem lies elsewhere, according to Sudhakar Reddy, President, Air Passengers Association.  “Apart from parking in remote bays another major factor is the time taken for unloading of luggage as the mechanical system of unloading the luggage is outdated and all the unloading is done in the open. The workers have raincoats they will take their own sweet time.”  

AAI, Director, Deepak Shastri said that baggage from international flights too gets delayed as the custom commissioner has not augmented the number of custom officials for many years.  

Another aspect that was pointed out by the director was that when specific bays are allotted to airlines for a night halt, the airlines tend to directly land there as it saves them a turnaround and from there the luggage has to come around and hence the delay.  “But it mostly happens with the last flights as they prefer to go directly to their bays,” Shastri said.    

A Jet Airways spokesperson pointed out that tractors carrying baggage do not have high speed. “The old airport is pretty far and with a speed of around 10 to 15 km per hour it does take time. What can be done?”

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