CHENNAI: A long-standing complaint that passengers flying to Chennai to take a connecting international flight have had, is that they need to walk a fair distance — lock, stock and barrel in tow. Now, Airports Authority of India (AAI) has authorised an inter-terminal shuttle to zip passengers across from the domestic to international terminals, without them having to walk too much.
“With Chennai becoming a major hub for international travel, especially to places like Colombo, Bangkok and The Philippines, there are lots of people who fly here to take low-cost international flights,” said an AAI official. With that view in mind, the shuttle was procured and pressed into service last week, earning the appreciation of quite a few passengers. It may be recalled that since the new terminals were pressed into use in 2013, a private company has operated shuttle cars to ferry passengers back and forth. But the only hitch was that this was restricted to the ‘elderly, infirm, disabled, sick and pregnant women’.
Passengers have hailed the introduction of the shuttle and have been making good use of it.
The only problem is that very often, it takes a while for the bus to fill up to even half its capacity, so that it can move back and forth between the terminals.
“We will introduce one more depending on the need. As of now, the travelator project and the Metro construction are going on and once it is completed, a bulk of the crowd will use the travelator to move between terminals,” said an AAI official.