President Chung Il-young of Incheon Int’l Airport Corp.

Immigration service processing time at Incheon International Airport is expected to be cut to around 20 minutes for arriving passengers and 40 minutes for outgoing passengers, according to a joint statement to enhance the competitiveness of the airport by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Aviation and the Incheon Int’l Airport Corp. 

The statement also said that parking lots at the airport will be expanded. The airport will also build “capsule hotels” where passengers can take a rest while waiting for their flights.

The airport will open four mobile checking zones at the immigration check points to cut down the waiting time to process documents. It takes an hour on average before the exit process is completed for outgoing passengers. The mobile checking zone will be increased to eight in total by 2020 so more passengers can have their papers checked with tablets to save time.

The airport also plans to introduce movable checking counters at airline counters to speed up the process for passengers.

The airport decided to open its three immigration offices half and hour earlier, at 6 a.m., daily to cut waiting hours for passengers.

Those measures at Incheon Int’l Airport will reduce the exit time for outgoing passengers to 43 minutes from 45 minutes on average, and to less than 40 minutes from 2020, the airport authorities said.

The airport will also increase the number of the travel document checking officers to 158 in 2020 from 104 now while the cargo loading points will be expand to 33 in 2020 from 23 now so that the time to process the entry procedures will be cut to 27 minutes from 29 minutes now and further to 23 minutes in 2020.

The size of the parking lot will be doubled to make room for 32,000 cars by 2020 from 18,000 cars now.

The airport will strengthen its hand-carried baggage processing by gradually taking over the responsibility for hand-carried baggage. The airport will directly hire its own professional manpower, which is currently left up to outside security firms, to prevent terrorist attacks on airport facilities. Expert analyses say that the airport should not outsource security firms as it is a job deemed too important to be left to the outside firms.

The airport authority has also decided to make efforts to boost the number of airlines using the airport to more than 100 by 2020 and handle 10 million transfer passengers. That’s an increase from the 7.42 million passengers last year.

All arriving passengers are required to have valid travel documents including a passport and visa (if applicable) and completed forms for quarantine, immigration and customs clearance. These forms are handed out on board and are also available at the airport. Passengers are advised to complete the forms while on board to expedite the clearance process. Transfer/transit passengers staying in the transfer area of Incheon International Airport who will not pass the immigration desk are not required to fill out the forms; however, transfer/transit passengers arriving from Southeast Asia, The Middle East, Africa and South America are required to fill out only the quarantine questionnaire.

A scene from the passenger terminal at Incheon Int’l Airport.(Photos:IIAC)