PATNA, May 27 -- In a last-minute manoeuvre, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has been able to temporarily tide over an architectural design flaw in the newly constructed terminal building of the Jayprakash Narayan International (JPNI) airport here, by removing a partition, separating the international and domestic departure lounge, to provide passengers access to the staircase in the security hold area (SHA), before Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates it on May 29, said people aware of the matter on Monday. Unlike most airports in India, the new terminal building of Patna airport does not have staircase alongside escalators to connect the three levels of the building through the SHA. The design flaw was detected recently at inspection stage, when final clearances through the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) were in process. The matter was urgently flagged with Sikka Associate Architects (SAA), New Delhi, responsible for its architectural design, said a senior functionary requesting anonymity. Two revised design plans were sent to accommodate a staircase in the domestic SHA from the exterior side of the building, said the official. "There was an access issue earlier to the staircase in the domestic departure SHA. We resolved it last Friday (May 23) by removing a partition internally, which now provides access to two separate staircases in the SHA. There is one staircase now for access through the international departure lounge and another for the domestic lounge. The domestic side (passenger) circulation issue of accessibility through staircase in SHA has been resolved," said Ashwani Kumar, project director of the Sikka Associate Architects, handling the Patna airport project. Earlier, passengers could access the base and mezzanine floors of the domestic departure lounge only through the eight lifts and two sets of escalators available in the SHA of the domestic departure lounge. As such, any last-minute change in the boarding gate of passengers, necessitating their movement from the mezzanine to the base floor of the departure lounge, or in case of any exigency like fire, could cause chaos. Some passengers, averse to step on the escalator, also prefer staircase, said officials. The mezzanine floor of the domestic departure lounge provides access to the passenger boarding bridge (PBB) or the aerobridge. Only one of the five proposed aerobridges would be functional initially. The other four were expected in the next six months, said officials. There were also issues with water leakage at level II of the inline baggage scanning system inside the terminal building. Besides, water supply issues also remained to be sorted out in some washrooms inside the terminal. AAI also awaits security clearance of the commercial area floor plan of the terminal building from the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, as it rushes through last-minute preparations ahead of the inauguration. AAI had also flagged a discrepancy in the gate nomenclature of the new integrated terminal building. While the departure gates were clearly labelled as D1, D2, D3, and so on, the arrival gates were marked as 1A, 2A, and so on, instead of A1, A2 to ensure consistency and clarity for passengers....