The entrance to Kolkata airport’s departure section of the domestic terminal is often getting clogged because DigiYatra, an app supposed to ensure seamless movement of fliers, is either developing glitches or some passengers are finding it difficult to use.
The facility introduced at the airport on April 1 has been installed at all the entry gates to the domestic departure section. Airport officials said 45 per cent of the eligible passengers are using DigiYatra, which is driven by facial recognition technology.
The airport handles about 25,000 departure passengers in the domestic section now, out of whom about 20,000 are eligible to use DigiYatra by downloading the app, said an official. Those flying on AirAsia and Akasa Air flights cannot use the facility.
However, many passengers alleged that they have to stand in a queue for up to almost 20 minutes to enter the terminal building while some, being unable to use it for technical glitches are using the entrances for non-DigiYatra passengers.
At times, when multiple flights are scheduled to take off, long queues are forming a front of the three DigiYatra-enabled entry gates in the domestic section — 1A, 2B and 3A.
The system does work but it is often doing so at an extremely slow pace because of which the waiting time for checking in has gone up manifold.
This newspaper spent close to three hours at the airport’s terminal building on the departure level on Tuesday and this is what we saw:
Snaking queues were spotted outside every DigiYatra-enabled entry gates and several fliers were seen checking the time on their watches and cellphones with worried faces as the time for their flight’s departure drew closer.
Several flyers said that even though they had downloaded the app prior to reaching the airport using their Aadhaar card details and one-time password verification, uploading their travel credentials as well as the e-boarding pass on the app was taking up too much time.
Priyanjana Das who was headed to Bangalore and had reached the airport at 10:45am said that the app itself was extremely slow to process information fed into it and the fact that her phone had a slow Internet at the airport made matters worse.
“I was booked on a flight that was supposed to depart Kolkata around 1pm. So I reached the airport well in time but was taken aback when I saw huge queues outside the Digi Yatra-enabled gates. There were glitches and it took me more than 20 minutes before I could finally check in,” said Priyanjana Das, who stays in New Town’s Tata Eden Court Housing Complex.
On Tuesday, a group of passengers were seen trying to help each other key in the details in the app.
Several members in the group said that some of them had spent close to 15 minutes trying to get the app to work. Therefore they had joined forces to try and figure out whether the app would actually work.
Officials said they have deployed manpower to assist the flyers, still there is a need for more awareness.
“There are Digi Buddies who are helping passengers. But 80 per cent of the passengers are coming to the airport without downloading the app. They are doing it at the gate which is why it is often taking time,” said C. Pattabhi, airport director.
All domestic passengers except for those flying on AirAsia and Akasa Air flights, can use the DigiYatra facility.
“We are trying to raise awareness about downloading the app before reaching the airport,” he said.