Full body scanners to be deployed in phased manner at airports, says BCAS chief

Full body scanners will be deployed at airports in a phased manner and the process is expected to start at major airports within a year, BCAS chief Zulfiquar Hasan said on Monday and stressed that there will not be any privacy issues as those have already been sorted out worldwide.

He also said that there will be options for passengers who have health issues in case they cannot use such scanners.

The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) has set a deadline for the end of next year for the deployment of full body scanners at airports.

At a briefing in the national capital, Hasan said BCAS has given a deadline but there are procurement cycle issues as airport operators get these machines from the same two or three vendors around the world.

To begin with, full body scanners will be deployed at major airports like Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

"We will deploy full-body scanners and it will be in a phase-wise process. We have given orders for a few airports and we hope that this process will start in major airports in a year or so," Hasan said.

According to him, there will be options for passengers who do not want to use the full-body scanners due to health issues.

To a query about possible privacy issues with respect to using full-body scanners, the BCAS chief said that such issues have been sorted out worldwide and in India also.

The Director General of BCAS was speaking at an event to mark Aviation Security Culture Week which will be celebrated from July 31 to August 5.

Meanwhile, BCAS, last year, recommended installation of scanners based on computer tomography technology at airports whereby passengers will not be required to take out electronic devices from their hand baggage before going through the scanner.

Currently, the scanners used at airports provide a two-dimensional view of the objects inside hand baggage.

Installation of such scanners is also expected to help in speeding up the security check-in process at airports.

India is one of the fastest-growing civil aviation markets in the world and in June, domestic air passenger traffic grew 18.78 per cent to around 1.25 crore compared to the year-ago period.