No relief from IGI crowding, flight crunch this winter

NEW DELHI: Despite assurances from the authorities, there will be no relief from overcrowding at IGI's domestic terminal, nor will the airport's flight frequency go up this winter.

The infra crunch at India's busiest airport was supposed to have eased in the upcoming season, with its three runways handling six more flights every hour and the jam-packed Terminal 1 getting some breathing space. But neither is runway capacity increasing as promised nor are one-third flights shifting from T1 in a hurry.

The minutes of meetings prepared by Airports Authority of India on slot allocation this winter shows IGIA's runways will handle only 67 flights an hour, 62 schedule and five are VVIP, defence and charter flights. Aviation authorities had promised that IGIA's three runways will handle 73 flights an hour this winter. This was supposed to lead to six-seven more flights an hour from 6am to 11pm, meaning an increase of almost 120 flights a day -leading to more choice for flyers through increased frequencies and new destinations being connected to Delhi.

"Maximum throughout hourly capacity (saturation capacity) for mix mode operation when all three runways are available at IGIA: Global (arrival + departure) capacity is 75 movements (70 schedule + 5 non schedule).(But) Practical hourly capacity (to be considered for allocation of slots) at IGIA: Global (arrival + departure) capacity is 67 (62 schedule + 5 non-schedule)," the AAI minutes state. On its part, Delhi Inter national Airport Pvt Ltd (DIAL) said this winter its peak runway capacity will touch 73 aircraft movements. "This winter we will operate under a profiled schedule which includes a peak hour of 73 scheduled operations... to maximise available scheduled slots based on airline demand and the capacity of the airport.During winter 2016, the airport averaged 1,170 scheduled slots per day and averaged 1,230 scheduled during summer 2017. During the winter of 2017, the airport will average more than 1,300 scheduled slots per day ," a DIAL spokesman said.

But airlines said the peak of 73 will be reached only for a couple of hours. The AAI minutes quote SpiceJet's Debashis Saha as saying that there was "no increase in the practical runway capacity at Delhi for winter 2017. Airlines would not be able to expand their operations or even maintain their existing slots (of summer 2017) as increase in movements at Delhi has been in only 1-2 hours in the entire day . Also this would severely restrict airlines' flexibility of changingamending slots. The upcoming runway closure in summer 2018 would see a further drop in the hourly movements at IGIA."

Apart from continued runway woes, the terminal capacity crunch will also continue this winter with one-third flights from T1 not shifting to T2 from Sunday .Due to this, T1 will continue to remain choked with only marginal relief coming from GoAir shifting to T2 from October 29.