Over 90% flyers rate security personnel at airports as 'excellent/very good': Survey

NEW DELHI: A unique ‘passenger feedback survey’ conducted by Central Industrial Security Force to analyse the security arrangements and behaviour of security personnel at airports suggests that 95.58% percent air-travellers rate CISF as “excellent/very good” in terms of making them feel safe, waiting time at security checks, thoroughness of security checks and courtesy and attitude of personnel towards them.
The feedback taken from over 3.30 lakh passengers over a period of one month at eight major airports – Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Cochin, Kolkata, Mumbai, Guwahati and Hyderabad, also reveals that only 0.19% passengers (2,900 out of 3,30,152 included in the survey) found CISF’s services at airports “unsatisfactory”.
However, several passengers have made several suggestions to improve services at the airports like – reducing waiting time at the security checks, deploying more women during peak hours, more check-in/security counters, smiling/courteous attitude of CISF personnel etc, which CISF Director General O P Singh said are “being looked into”.
“It’s an in-house analysis which we did in October to know how to improve our services at the airports and what steps need to be taken to make sure air-travellers don’t face any problems. But we will soon fire a professional group to analyse this aspect, so that there is a third party to tell us about the areas where we need improvement,” Singh told TOI.
Recently, the World Quality Congress (WQC) had awarded the CISF security at Delhi airport as the “best” while Airport Council International's airport service quality (ASQ) rating had earlier this year termed security at Delhi airport as better than Heathrow, Dallas, Los Angeles, Dubai and Paris airport.
About the latest in-house survey, Singh said when the result of the feedback is analysed on the scale of 5, the passengers have graded CISF’s overall security and services as 4.73 out of 5.
“CISF has been graded overall maximum 4.80 out of 5 in the category of feeling of being safe and secure,” a statement issued by CISF said.
It said that out of the four questions or parameters of rating sought from the passengers, the rating of 4.60 for 'waiting time at security inspection' is the "lowest". “This aspect needs further analysis for improvement in the area without compromising on security,” it said.
The survey also found that the recent initiative of stopping the stamping and tagging of the cabin baggage of passengers was found to be “very heartening” by the travellers and they suggested that this system should be implemented at all the airports.
“Efforts are being made and the matter is being pursued with airport operators to provide all requisite security requirements at the earliest so that tag-less security can be implemented at all airports,” it said.
The regime of tag-less hand baggage is currently operational at 23 civil airports.