If not for the COVID-19 lockdown, Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) would have celebrated its 12th anniversary. The country’s sixth busiest airport was opened on March 23, 2008, but last month’s ‘eventful’ date was missed with the shutdown of commercial civil aviation.

While international flights were halted on March 22, domestic operations were stopped on March 24, bringing the daily passenger footfall from 60,000 to zero. The airport used to see a daily in and out flight movement of about 550 planes, including 70 international aircraft.

All the air traffic is now restricted to special flights carrying stranded foreigners and regular cargo movement of medicines and other essentials. As a result, the airport, which has over 5,000 employees manning different functions at any given point of time round the clock, is now forced to manage with about 500 or so.

These workers have become the ‘unsung heroes’, doing deep cleaning and sanitation covering every inch of the 1.27 lakh sq.ft airport spread across seven levels with a terminal building, aerobridges, washrooms, passenger processing zones, interim domestic and departure terminals, retail zones, and parking, among others, informed an official spokesman.

These house keeping personnel have been given protective gears and their health is frequently monitored to check for any COVID-19 symptoms under the supervision of terminal operations team.

This work is done daily to make the airport environs completely free of any virus strain at any passenger touch points such as self-check-in kiosks, seating areas, escalators, elevators, check in desks, self-bag drop area, frisking zones, baggage belts, baggage tubs, and boarding gates.

Another band of bravehearts are the skeletal maintenance and engineering teams keeping critical assets functional like Aeronautical Ground Lighting (AGL) used as visual aids by pilots and other facilities such as UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) to seamlessly run the vital function of Air Traffic Control (ATC) centre, maintaining power and IT support to the AOCC (Airports Operations and Control Centre).

These teams are keeping sewage treatment plants running too. A rudimentary team of AOCC and Air-side Operations is working in shifts to ensure the airport is fully operational to handle various types of aircraft, conducting runway and taxiway inspections and so on. Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) is on its toes to take care of any emergency requirements. “We are keeping our systems ready and the key personnel are prepared to start airline operations at a short notice, whenever the government permits,” he said.