The award-winning Hamad International Airport has been verified as the world’s leading facility in COVID-19 safety.
Hamad International Airport (HIA) is the first entity in the world to achieve independent verification for its implementation of COVID-19 International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Aviation Health Safety Protocols from the British Standards Institution (BSI).
HIA received the verification during a ceremony attended by Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker; Jon Wilks, British ambassador to Qatar; Abdulla bin Nasser Turki Al-Subaey, President of the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority; HIA’s Chief Operation Officer Engr. Badr Mohammed Al-Meer and Jamal Dalli, Business Development Manager at BSI.
“This Verification of Compliance is a testament to the airport’s commitment to maintaining business efficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic while implementing unprecedented measures to protect its staff and passengers in compliance with guidelines issued by the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Civil Aviation Recovery Taskforce (CART),” said HIA in a statement.
To ensure the health and wellbeing of its staff and passengers, HIA swiftly responded to the aviation challenges imposed by the pandemic. The airport introduced robotics, advanced thermal screening, strictly implemented a 1.5m physical distancing rule across all passenger touchpoints around the airport, and ordered the sanitising of touchpoints every 10-15 minutes.
The airport also conducts regular disinfection of all baggage trolleys and tubs.
Read also: All you need to know about the new guidelines for travel to and from Qatar
HIA was also one of the few airports to introduce paperless air travel through its implementation of biometric identification services at key airport touchpoints, such as self-service bag-drop, pre-immigration, e-gate and self-boarding gates.
The airport also introduced the C2 screening system, which gives travellers the freedom to move through security checkpoints without taking out any electronic devices from their bags, reducing cross-contamination.
Qatar’s airport was ranked the “Third Best Airport in the World”, among 550 airports worldwide, by the SKYTRAX World Airport Awards 2020, its highest rank since it began its operations in 2014.
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