Even private cars were forced to pay for entering the airport.

CHENNAI: Confusion reigns at the entry and exit points of Chennai airport with people in their own vehicles forced to shell out Rs 40 despite leaving within the stipulated period. The new system, introduced by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) on Monday for international terminal entry and exit and on Tuesday for domestic entry-exit points, allows private vehicles coming to drop people to leave without any fee and charges yellow board (commercial) vehicles Rs 40 for a 30-minute stay. In reality, however, all vehicles are being charged Rs 40 by those manning the parking ticket counters, say visitors.

After the new system was introduced, airport director S Sree Kumar told TOI, the issue of identity cards — cards of one colour for those coming to drop or pick up passengers and cards of a different colour for those going to the parking lot — created a lot of confusion.

“In the first two days, I received several complaints from visitors about the collection of fees by those manning the counters. We had initial hiccups, but things are slowly stabilising now,” he said.

Another airport official said that the parking contract had not been awarded to anyone.

The AAI had hired workers to collect fee from vehicles entering the airport and the arrangement was being handled on a trial basis. The operation of counters had resulted in a revenue loss of nearly ?40,000 per eight hours, the official said.

The confusion, Sree Kumar said, was probably because some of the workers hired by the AAI to handle the counters were not able to understand the system to be adopted. Following complaints from incensed passengers, the airport director said, workers had specifically been told not to collect money from occupants of private cars entering and exiting the airport.

The AAI, which had installed CCTV cameras across the entire airport corridor, recently announced a system where any vehicle found in a non-parking area would be penalised Rs 440 was being introduced. However, this is yet to become operational.

The idea of imposing a stiff penalty is to avoid unnecessary parking of cabs on the airport premises, said Sree Kumar. Until a few years ago, when the monitoring of vehicles was not as strict as it is now, several cab drivers were known to park their vehicles on the airport premises for indefinite periods of time, creating problems for all, said the official.

