Harassed flyers, frustrated airline staff and swelling crowds have made flying into and out of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport a nightmare. Other large airports across the country have also been dealing with swelling crowds. An obvious reason has been the surge in the number of passengers, which is back to pre-pandemic levels.
In December, the number of domestic passengers crossed the 400,000-mark on many days. Adding to the flyers’ rush is the long delay in augmentation of airport infrastructure and these delays have only lengthened post Covid-19.
While all the stakeholders — government agencies, airport operators and airlines — have taken several measures to lessen congestion over the last few days, the rush is unlikely to ease just yet.
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Airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad accounted for 90% of traffic handled by private airports in 2022, as per ratings agency Crisil. So the passenger rush at these large airports is a bigger cause for concern than a capacity constraint at smaller airports.
Sidharath Kapur, an airport sector veteran, told FE, “With pent up demand alongside natural growth in passenger footfall, airport capacities would be generally running behind demand. And this situation is further aggravated due to delays in expansion being undertaken in brownfield airports. The development of second greenfield airports in constrained cities like Goa, Mumbai and Chennai is behind the growth curve. The exception to this is Jewar airport, which is expected to come up within the time the Delhi airport would reach saturation capacity.”
At the Delhi airport, passengers have complained of missed flights due to congestion, which begins right at the terminal entrance. A senior airline executive termed the situation “a real pain”. This person said that the airline has had to accommodate passengers on later flights as they miss their scheduled ones; for those missing late evening flights, airport stays have to be arranged. All domestic airlines had apprised concerned officials of the required tweaks at the country’s busy airports ahead of the busy holiday season, this person said, asking not to be named.
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Bombarded with social media complaints about the unprecedented airport chaos, the civil aviation ministry asked the airport operator to increase the number of terminal entry gates as well as the Automatic Tray Retrieval System (ATRS) at baggage scan belts. And at least one in five peak hour flights being handled by Delhi airport has been rescheduled.
But all these measures appear to be more of a quick fix solution than a long-term plan.
An airport source said that in 2019, Delhi International Airport (DIAL) had embarked on an expansion plan which would take its annual passenger handling capacity from about 69 million now to 100 million. “But this project got delayed because of Covid-19 disruption. Construction work had started in August 2019 but remained suspended for most of 2020 and restarted only in late 2021. Now, the proposed expansion is expected to be completed by mid-2023. This is an almost one year delay,” the source said.
Meanwhile, airport capacity woes continue across the country. In brownfield airports, unavailability of land has made it tough for required capacity addition to be done. Case in point: Mumbai airport. The second airport at Navi Mumbai has been delayed, with planned capacity of 12 million passengers per year.
Also, though the government has granted in-principle approval to 21 greenfield airport projects, only nine have actually started getting built. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture had noted while examining the demand for grants of the ministry of civil aviation for 2022-23 that India’s airport infrastructure planning needs to be improved. It had pointed to majority of greenfield airport projects unable to start, and those which did come up being already saturated. “Every greenfield airport must be planned in such a way that it meets the requirements of the next 40 years,” the panel had said. It had also urged for expansion of brownfield airports.