Pune: The number of complaints regarding the chaos inside the Pune airport terminal building has been going down for the past few months. Earlier, social media was flooded with complaints about the chaos while waiting for security checks. 

To tackle the complaints, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), responsible for providing security at the airport, has deputed extra staff during peak hours. 

Most of the flights take off during the night and 3-4 flights arrive at a time. There is no possibility of starting more flights during the day slots. For easy movement of fliers, the CISF decided to deploy additional staff, resulting in reduced queues during the peak hours. 

“After 9 pm and till 1 am, 30 flights arrive and depart from the Pune airport. During this time, we have seen long queues of passengers waiting for their security clearance. It is our responsibility to check every passenger. If a single passenger misses his/ her flight, they end up paying double fare. We decided to depute extra staff during the night,”” said a senior officer of CISF from New Delhi on condition of anonymity.

“We will also open extra frisking booths and depute these extra staff. Our priority is to help passengers and provide security,” he said.

Earlier, fliers coming at the airport had to wait in long queues due to less number of security checkpoints. They also had to wait at the departure gate while entering the terminal building for the boarding pass. The authority has added 10 security checkpoints at the gates. 

Last year in July, the administration had created an interconnection corridor to connect security hold area one and two on the ground floor to enhance passengers’ facilitation.“We have set up a queue barrier for passengers for security checks. Earlier, long queues were seen coming out of the terminal building. Also, the waiting time for each passenger in the queue was around 7-8 minutes, now we reduced it to 3-4 minutes. However, there is no change in checking of passengers,” said the officer.

The number of flights has gone down from 180 to 160 and also the number of passengers have reduced. 

The seating capacity has increased to 2,100 and the administration has provided more space for fliers to walk inside the building.