Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (SP)
Mangaluru, May 14: The deputy commissioner (DC) of Dakshina Kannada, on Wednesday May 13, shot off a letter to the director of Mangaluru International Airport, drawing his attention to certain inadequacies pointed out by some passengers on their arrival at the airport here.
She drew the attention of the director to reports appearing in a section of the media about passengers who arrived at the airport here the day before facing difficulties on arrival. "Even though the fact that certain special categories of passengers like pregnant women and people requiring medical support were in the said flight, as per reports, the airport did not arrange enough people like porters, assistant staff etc. The passengers reportedly were not briefed properly on the procedure they had to undergo at the airport," she wrote.
The DC attracted the attention of the director of the airport to the fact that during her visit to the airport on May 9, she had issued instructions to extend support the passenger arriving on May 12. She has requested the director to personally oversee the arrangements during the next flight to make sure that such incidents do not get repeated, and help the district administration in coordinating with airport authorities and concerned airlines bringing passengers.
Daijiworld TV had taken special initiative and complaints were escalated to the district administration after which the state government issued revised standard operating procedure (SOPs) for international returnees. Also, the DC has now urged the airport director to personally oversee the arrangements.
Later in the eveneg, on a live show on Daijiworld TV, airport director V V Rao clarified many issues and assured to clear them. Answering a number of questions he said that food packets were not promised to the passengers as it was not a regular commercial flight. He also informed that even though the handling of luggage was assigned to an agency, the cleaning staff had helped the passengers load the luggage into the buses. He further assured to take personally handle the issues during the next flight with all available resources. He also added that he would assign 10 more people to help passengers with luggage and see that no inconvenience is caused to any of the passengers.