Hamad International Airport (HIA) served a record high influx of passengers during the winter holiday peak period, handling one million passengers in the first week of January 2020, marking the average of 138,649 passengers in a 24 hour period.
It is the highest number of passengers handling in a single day, while maintaining its high standards of passenger experience and operational excellence, said HIA in a press release yesterday.
Queuing times at key touchpoints of the airport were significantly reduced with average wait times as low as one minute 20 seconds at transfer security and two minutes 24 seconds at arrival immigration.
Some 99.4 percent of passengers transferring through HIA queued for less than five minutes at transfer security screening, with the average wait time being only one minute 20 seconds.
This is an industry-leading achievement which has been maintained throughout 2019 and was accomplished by training highly professional staff according to the latest international aviation security standards and as many as 49 screening lanes being operated simultaneously during peak times.
Almost 100 percent of transfer passengers with Minimum Connecting Time (MCT) of 45 minutes or less were connected to their onward flights without delay.
Some 99.4 percent of passengers transferring through HIA queued for less than five minutes at transfer security screening, with the average wait time being only 1 minute 20 seconds.
This is an industry-leading achievement which has been maintained throughout 2019 and was accomplished by training highly professional staff according to the latest international aviation security standards and as many as 49 screening lanes being operated simultaneously during peak times.
Almost 100 percent of transfer passengers with Minimum Connecting Time (MCT) of 45 minutes or less were connected to their onward flights without delay.
This was achieved by conducting their security screening at select contact gates which have been equipped with X-ray machines and walk through metal detectors, instead of having them go through security screening at the transfers’ hall.
This is another industry wide achievement which was accomplished throughout 2019. HIA also plans to adopt advanced screening technologies which won’t require passengers to remove laptops from cabin bags, further improving the passengers’ travel experience.
96.5 percent of arriving passengers at HIA at certain peak periods queued for less than 10 minutes at immigration with the average waiting time being as low as 2 minutes 24 seconds. To minimise any inconvenience to customers, the airport offered complimentary parking to its customers during the peak periods so passengers could be dropped off and picked up with ease. Waiting times at the taxi pavilion were also kept at a minimum and free luggage loading services were offered to passengers.
The self-service kiosks implemented in the terminal by HIA as part of its Smart Airport programme has automated the check-in, bag-drop and pre-immigration security processes, which has allowed departing passengers to be processed even faster. With the use of innovative software solutions that forecast passenger traffic in real-time and measure waiting times, the airport was able to proactively minimise queuing times.
HIA’s rapid growth is being addressed by its massive expansion project, Phase A of the expansion is set to comprise of a central concourse linking concourses D and E and will increase the airport’s capacity to more than 53 million passengers annually by 2022. Phase B, which will be completed after 2022, will extend concourses D and E to further enhance the airport’s capacity to more than 60 million passengers annually.
HIA is currently a candidate for the “Best Airport in the World” award by Skytrax which also classified it as a five-star airport in 2017.
