Hamad International Airport opens two additional transfer points

DOHA: Hamad International Airport’s (HIA) commitment to providing a seamless transfer experience for its passengers and maintaining world-class standards of security has led to an initiative to further improve its transfer product. HIA has increased security screening capacity and reduced queuing time in its transfer areas. It has also further improved customer service in the transfer areas, now providing an industry-leading customer service promise.

Qatar’s award-winning airport recently opened two additional transfer points, bringing the total to four separate transfer areas spread across the north and south nodes of the terminal, reducing walking times to transfer areas for passengers and increasing its overall security screening capacity.

With its latest initiative, HIA can now ensure that at least 95 percent of its transfer passengers queue for under five minutes, which is an industry-leading achievement. HIA exceeded this mark during the month of April 2018, where out of the more than one million transfer passengers that were screened, 99.5 percent queued for under five minutes.

To further enhance customer satisfaction in the transfers areas, a new customer service and security training package has been introduced. The airport has had 500 of its staff undergo an extensive and challenging six-week training program in order to ensure high safety and security standards are met while simultaneously providing exceptional customer service. The screening is being conducted by the HIA Security team in close cooperation with the Ministry of Interior and Qatar’s Civil Aviation Authority.

Passengers are also being given the opportunity to share their customer satisfaction feedback then and there. Out of the one million customers screened in March, 90 percent of the customers rated their experience as either good or excellent.

Brigadier Essa Arar, Director of Airport Security Department said: “We are constantly trying to improve the security processes at the airport to make it more efficient and customer friendly. This is a great combined effort by HIA, Qatar Civil Aviation Authority and the Ministry of Interior to improve the experience of passengers traveling through the State of Qatar. We will continue to work together to achieve excellence in security in Qatar’s award winning airport”.

Saeed Yousef Al Sulaiti, Vice President of Airport Security at HIA said: “At HIA, our goal is to ensure that our facilities and services provide our passengers with a hassle-free journey. This can only be achieved when we tackle key issues that passengers have, such as long waiting times and queues. The project took a total of eight months to roll out and has been praised by a number of international security regulators ranging from those within the UK, US and New Zealand. HIA is recognized as one of the safest airports in the world and continues to meet the highest standards of safety and world-class security.”

HIA’s services for transfer passengers have also previously been recognized by the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2018 where the five-star airport was honored as the World’s Sixth Best Airport for Transit Passengers.