From Left: Kijima Hideto , Director, Japan Accessible Center, Japan; Bill Forester, Founder, TravAbility Travel, Australia; Isabella Menichini, Head of Tourism and Marketing, Milan Municipality, Italy; Abdulla G Ali, Senior Manager, Terminal Operations at
The number of Passengers with Reduced Mobility (PRM) who use Hamad International Airport (HIA) monthly has increased to 39,000, according to an HIA official.
“In 2015 we successfully handled 30,000 PRM passengers per month on 10,000 flights. In 2016 to date, this number has grown to an average of 39,000 PRM passengers per month on 11,500 flights,” said Abdulla G Ali, Senior Manager Terminal Operations at HIA.
Ali was speaking on what HIA has been doing in terms of accessibility at a panel session entitled “Accessible Tourism for All: Examining global concepts and identifying new approaches and initiatives for sustainable accessible tourism” at the first Accessible Qatar Conference yesterday at Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre.
A year after it opened, HIA had the chance to trial all its facilities and services for PRM during Qatar’s hosting of the 2015 IPC Athletics World Championships in which athletes with disabilities compete.
“It was a big challenge for us because we had to process 2,500 to 3,000 passengers a day, 2,000 of whom were wheelchair passengers,” he said.
HIA offers barrier-free access and dedicated facilities to passengers who require special assistance. “From the car park to the end of the north node of the terminal, we try to provide all the services required for PRM. This starts from where the passenger enters the terminal to the check-in terminal to the immigration lanes to security lanes all the way to the aircraft,” he explained.
Each of the check-in rows in the terminal building is equipped with special handling desks to help PRM.
We have nine check-in rows which have 15 check-in counters and each check-in row has a specific counter which is lower and wider than the common check-in counter to accommodate people on wheelchair,” he said.
All the elevators have been designed to accommodate all wheelchair passengers in addition to inclined walkways, moving walkways and passenger train.
The terminal building is equipped with over 180 evacuation chairs to assist PRM out of the building in emergency situations. “The evacuation chairs are something we recently launched. We are currently doing lots of exercises on emergency evacuations. We have trained approximately 800 of our staff now on how to use the wheelchairs during emergency since elevators are banned during an evacuation and therefore we have to take the emergency access routes which involve staircases," he explained. The terminal is also equipped with over 190 toilets for the disabled including companion toilets, large disabled toilets and single disabled toilets.
For passengers requiring additional assistance, HIA is fully equipped with specialised equipment including medi-lifts for seamless ramp transfers, PRM-ready golf carts for effective terminal transportation and aisle chairs for easy embarkation and disembarkation.
