Did I get your attention? Well, this is only partially a clickbait headline. Let me explain:
Hyderabad Airport, built by GMR group, is truly one of the very best in the world in its category. It has a beautiful symmetrical design, with two clear sections – one for domestic and the other for international flights. The total balance sheet size, as per their latest Annual Report, is around 12000 crores.
Let’s now look at the utilization of each terminal in terms of the number of departures. While the domestic terminal handles around 400 odd flights per day, the international terminal handles only 40! In other words, for every 10 domestic flights, there is only one international flight. Yet we’ve dedicated half the airport and its infrastructure to international flights. If one were to apportion the total capital employed of 12000 crores equally to both terminals, then one realizes how 6000 crores of newly built infrastructure lies underutilized. On the other hand, a larger number of non-ATR flights do not have aerobridge facilities on the domestic terminal side.
Lessons from Singapore: Distributed Security Clearance
Changi airport (one of the very best in the world) has a very unique and efficient system for security clearance of passengers. While all other airports in the world have a centralized area for X-Ray machines at the very entrance for scanning carry-on luggage of all passengers, Changi has devised a decentralized system and has two smaller X-Ray machines at every departure gate, which the passengers traveling for that particular flight have to use. This makes the overall waiting time in queuing lines very minimal.
Distributed Immigration Clearance?
That’s when it hit me – why not do something similar with immigration? Instead of having these 40-odd immigration counters section at the beginning of the international terminal, why not make them decentralized and move them to the gates? In other words, the immigration officers for each international departure will be sitting at the gate and clearing the passengers. With the proposed automated immigration gates, this can become even easier.
This then opens the possibility for us to use BOTH terminals for ALL flights. There will be no differentiation in the infrastructure between Domestic and International. Some of the gates in both terminals can have glass protection, and only those gates will be used for international flights such that once passengers clear immigration at the gate, they do not step out. This is similar to what is currently the situation in Changi. When there are no international flights, these gates can also be used for domestic departures too. Except for ATR flights, all aerobridges can therefore be fully utilized.
What About Duty Free Shopping?
The other difference between a domestic and international passenger is their ability to buy duty-free goods. This is an easier problem to solve. We can have duty-free shops in both terminals but only let international passengers (with their boarding passes) shop there. Or even better, domestic passengers can shop there too, but have to pay a higher price that includes the customs duty.
Once this idea is tested, it can easily be replicated in other airports across India.
Hari’s Curries
A Buffet of Reflections