Four more airports have been added to the "tagless travel" list- Calicut, Coimbatore, Indore and Vadodara- taking the number of such airports to 17.

Passengers flying out of these will no longer need to get their hand baggage stamped.

Instead of numbers on tags to identify which counter it was screened at, full camera coverage will serve the purpose, in case something goes wrong.

Hand baggage screening

According to current security procedures, air travellers are required to attach separate tags on to their hand baggage.

These bags are screened, the tag stamped by the CISF, and then verified again before the passenger boards the airplane.

This security process is followed neither in European countries nor in the United States.

Stamping hand baggage to stop at Delhi, 6 other airports

The Central Industrial Security Force stated that it will stop the process of stamping hand baggage at Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Cochin from 1 April.

CISF DG OP Singh said "security check will speed up and our staff will get more time to check suspicious baggage."

CISF conducted trial rounds of this in 2 phases, across 12 airports.

Handbag stamping at six more domestic airports to stop

From June 1, six more airports at Chennai, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow, Patna and Trivandrum will be exempt from security checking of handbags.

The pilot started at seven airports in April, including the metros, and is now being extended.

CISF, which is in charge of the handbag stamping aspect, is exploring if it can be implemented in Bhubaneshwar, Goa, Pune, Varanasi and Vishakhapatnam too.

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