The airport’s promise to switch on inline baggage screening in the domestic section of the airport by Durga Puja has hit a logistics hurdle, continuing a long tradition of deadlines being missed.

Airport officials said the arrival of some equipment required for the system to be made operational had been delayed, pushing back the installation schedule by a few months.

At a meeting last Friday, representatives of airlines had asked the airport authorities to start installing the equipment after Diwali to avoid chaos during the peak of holiday traffic.

“We have to close each conveyor belt one after the other to install the chips that will scan bags as they travel through the belt. Each belt will have to be closed for operations for at least 15 days,” an airport official said on Monday. “Airlines have requested us to start work after Diwali because they would otherwise be unable to handle the increase in passenger traffic,” he said.

About 62,000 fliers use the airport every day. The figure could increase to at least 70,000 during the festive period.

Once inline baggage screening starts, passengers in the domestic section will no longer have to stand in separate queues to get their registered luggage scanned before checking in. During the morning and evening rush hours, passengers often have to spend more than 15 minutes in front of the X-ray scanners.

Back-end electrical work for the inline baggage screening system has started.

The airport will have eight screening machines, five of them in the domestic section. The international section already has inline scanning, which was installed in mid-2016. The system needs an upgrade, though.

“We have asked the authorities to focus on the domestic section because that is where the rush is,” an airline official said.

Some airline officials blamed lack of planning by the government-run airport for the delay in the system being made operational. “We were told that there was a delay in the arrival of the scanning system. Nobody said what the reason for the delay was,” said an official of a private airline.

Complaints about long queues continue to pour in. “We always advise domestic passengers to arrive at the airport 30 minutes earlier than the scheduled two-hour window before departure because of the queues. Why should passengers suffer after paying airport service charges?” said Anil Punjabi, chairman (east) of the Travel Agents’ Federation of India.

The inline baggage screening system was to be installed by June, but procurement hassles at the headquarters of the Airports Authority of India delayed its arrival at the port.