Decongestion at airports: Govt to introduce 3D baggage scanners soon

India will soon mandate the use of new baggage scanners that produce three-dimensional images of the contents at the country's airports, enabling security personnel to better analyse what is inside the baggage without requiring passengers to remove electronic devices, people familiar with the matter said.

The new machines will be first installed in all major airports such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. 

Once the notification is issued, airport operators are expected to install them within a year.

These machines, which are widely used at many airports in the United States and Europe, do not require passengers to remove their laptops, chargers, or jackets from the cabin baggage.

These will make the airport experience smoother for flyers and increase the airport's capacity to handle more passengers and flights, the official said.

The move comes against the backdrop of passengers reporting delays at various airports.

The Delhi airport has been in the spotlight for a week now and the delays led Union civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia to step in.

Scindia told TV channels on Wednesday that a primary reason for congestion in Delhi was that flights were bundled depending on the number of flights that could land and take off.

This, he said, was flawed and told officials to fix the number of flights on the basis of the airport's throughput capacity.

The security check after passengers pick up their boarding passes has been one bottleneck.

Scindia said the number of x-ray machines have been increased from 13 to 17 and this figure will go up to 20 by the end of this month.