It has been a rough time for aviation, but with these rough times, aviation is also seeing the easing of some of the oldest bureaucratic rules which have been around for a very long time. India has been stamping boarding passes while the rest of the world moved away from them at least about eight years ago. Also, the reason we don’t have mobile boarding passes in India at the moment, and changing flights once airside is so cumbersome.

This begun to change recently. After trials at many airports, Mumbai got the go-ahead to stop the stamping of boarding passes, but only for domestic flights. Hyderabad also went touchless for some passengers only. But this never went largescale for whatever reason.

Now, in the era of the CoronaVirus, as aviation will open up in the coming days, the Government of India finally thought it would be the time to do away with the stamping of the “security check” boarding passes by the security forces such as CISF.

The order states,

It has been decided to dispense with the procedure of stamping passengers’ boarding pass that is being done by aviation security group after completion of pre-embarkation security check (PESC) of the concerned passenger, till further orders. The airport operator shall ensure that the requisite monitoring system of high definition fixed CCTV cameras and supporting infrastructure are maintained all through at PESC points at an appropriate height so that boarding pass of the passenger and his/her identity are digitally recorded.

Here is a copy of the order.

Bottomline

For once, I’d say, thanks CoVid19, for jolting the hand of the Indian aviation apparatus to dispense with a useless regulation. No more stained white shirts going forward, I hope.

What do you make of the latest move by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security?