Bengaluru airport has introduced a slew of new facilities to deliver a hassle-free on ground experience when you fly out of the city. The automated Bengaluru airport baggage drop counters become the first of their kind in India which enables self-bag drop.

If you are flying out of Bengaluru on AirAsia or SpiceJet, you can now wholly skip the queues at the check-in counter. You start by printing your boarding pass at any one of the numerous kiosks. If you have check-in bags, print the required number of tags too.

Once you have tagged your bags, head over to one of the 16 fully-automated self-bag drop machines. Scan your boarding pass, place your bag and the machine will do the rest. It will automatically measure the dimensions and weight of your bag. In case you have excess baggage, you’ll be directed to a hybrid counter to complete the check-in and payment.

Bengaluru airport joins the likes of Hyderabad airport by introducing e-gates for boarding. If your airline is using e-boarding, all you need to do is to go to the gate, scan your boarding pass and wait for the turnstile to open.

Theoretically, this should make the boarding process easier and faster. But after seeing them in action for some time now in Hyderabad, I felt it made very little difference. New flyers, senior citizens et al, still required an agent’s help to scan their boarding passes. SpiceJet has already started using e-boarding at Bengaluru. I flew out of Bengaluru a few days ago on Jet Airways, and they were still following the old procedure.

Have a few hours to kill before boarding your international flight? You can now take a nap at a sleeping pod at the Bengaluru Airport. Extremely popular in Japan, sleeping pods are spaces where you can snooze. The pods are also equipped with charging ports for your electronic devices as well as storage space for your luggage. An hour here will cost you INR 700, while the 2-hour and 3-hour tariffs are priced at INR 1200 and INR 1400 respectively.

Bottomline

It is good to see new facilities coming up at Indian airports to ease the hassles associated with air travel. And there is more to come. I’m especially looking forward to seeing the upcoming facial-recognition based security check.

Have you used the new self-bag drop facility yet? How was your experience?