Will Hindon terminal have a life beyond Noida airport?

Strap: The facility, now two years old, currently has just one operational route and has struggled to draw more airlines. But civil aviation MoS VK Singh insists this will change with Ayodhya & Kushinagar flights and wants to push for the terminal to be converted into a full-fledged one
Ghaziabad: “What can you say about its future when the government is not even renewing the lease?” asks Abhishek Garg, whose family owns most of the land on which the Hindon terminal, the civilian adjunct of this prime Indian Air Force base, stands.
Commissioned in 2019 to supplement Delhi’s IGI Airport, mainly as a base for affordable UDAN (ude desh ka aam nagrik) flights, the Hindon civil terminal never fulfilled the role it was set up for. For no apparent fault of its own. The closure of Jet Airways in 2019 and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 changed both scale and mood in the aviation sector. The Hindon terminal never got the tailwind it needed.
Today, just one airline operates from the terminal – a Star Airlines flight to Hubli-Kalburgi in Karnataka. There has been talk of more, flight links to the Ayodhya and Kushinagar airports, but those are yet to fructify. Besides, with more slots for airlines being available at IGIA and Delhi-NCR’s second proper international airport being built at Jewar in Greater Noida, aviation experts don’t see a future for the Ghaziabad terminal.
The political class, though, is insistent that the terminal can be maintained as a crucial link between UP’s western and other districts. But once the Noida airport becomes operational in October 2024, this space too will shrink.
Starting troubles
One of the reasons, argue experts, why the Hindon terminal remains on shaky ground is its inability to draw any of the major commercial airlines, even for short-haul, inter-state flights. Officially, one more route – to the hilly reaches of Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand – was commissioned from here. But soon after the historic inaugural flight, which generated much optimism about the prospects of the terminal as the second ‘airport’ of Delhi-NCR, services on this route were marred by cancellations. As of today, it stands suspended. Serviced by a 6-seater Beechcraft King Air 350 of Heritage Airlines, “technical snags” have been cited as the reason for the suspension.
An official from Star Airlines said services have been smooth but terminal experience for passengers is not as it should be. “We operate Hindon-Hubli flights four days a week. The average seat occupancy is 90%. On the Hindon-Kalburgi route, the average seat occupancy is 80%. However, arrangements at the terminal are not up to the mark as compared to other airports. Lack of refreshment facilities for passengers has resulted in complaints. This is one area the airport administration needs to work on,” the official said.
Shobha Bhardwaj, director of the terminal, said, “We have been ensuring that passengers at Hindon terminal are provided with best of services that are on a par with other airports. But the fact is that the terminal is still in development stages, and in due course of time, it will be attended to.”
Garg, whose family leased out 17,000 square metres, approximately 80% of the land, for the annexe, believes the lack of urgency in renewing the lease reflects the reality of the terminal. “The land lease of the civil terminal ended in August this year, and yet, the administration and the aviation department have not moved to renew it,” said the farmer from Sikandar village.
Ghaziabad district magistrate RK Singh said, “There are over 20 farmers from whom land got acquired on lease. We recently renewed the lease with 95% of these farmers for two years. In the remaining cases, the landowner resides in a foreign country, and we have intimated them about the need to extend the lease. When they come to us, we will complete the lease formalities of all 100% farmers.”
Two arguments
Former GM (corporate communications) of the Airports Authority of India G S Bawa told TOI, “The Hindon civil terminal can at best can be viewed as a stepping stone for the Jewar airport. It will never be able to sustain itself with the Delhi and Noida airports close by. The Hindon terminal was necessitated because slots at IGI airport were not there. But now, they are very much available. Till the time the Noida airport is ready, it will perhaps generate traffic, but that will ultimately shift to Noida once that airport becomes operational.”
Industry insiders also argue that the Hindon terminal was always supposed to be a stopgap arrangement till Noida airport took shape, which is why it was hurriedly set up on the extended runway at the base, which is of vital strategic interest for IAF fleets.
Minister of state for civil aviation Gen VK Singh (retd) insisted in a conversation with TOI that the Hindon terminal will play “an important role” in future, even after the Noida airport becomes operational. “There is no doubt that,” said Singh, the former Army chief who represents Ghaziabad in the Lok Sabha. “Under RCS (regional connectivity scheme), the Hindon civil terminal was started to provide regional flights from Ghaziabad. But since it was operationalized, things haven’t moved the way they should have. Other than Hubli and Kalburgi, airlines have shown no interest in other routes and the situation arising out of the pandemic is partly to be blamed for it,” said Singh.
The minister felt the terminal would see a revival in interest with two new routes within UP. “In March last year, Indigo was keen on starting operations from Hindon and talks were going on in earnest till Covid played spoilsport. But more recently, two airlines – Turbo Aviation and SpiceJet – have been awarded the Ayodhya and Kushinagar routes under UDAN scheme and it is a matter of time before flight operations start on these new routes.”
Singh said he had been pushing for turning Hindon into a full-fledged terminal. “An Airports Authority of India official who was at the helm of affairs at the time the terminal was conceived insisted on taking land required for developing it on lease, which cast a doubt on the terminal’s future. Ideally, we should have acquired this land. But even now, it’s not too late for that and things are moving in a direction where we will acquire land, perhaps that will give a stamp of permanency to the terminal. After all, given its proximity to western UP districts, this terminal can be a boon for passengers from that side of the state despite Jewar coming up,” said Singh.
Manoj Kumar would agree. The Saharanpur resident says he has flown to and from Hubli, where he is a teacher in Kendriya Vidyalaya, multiple times. “The Hindon civil terminal has been very convenient for me. It has spared me the travel to Delhi to catch a flight from IGI, which would also take more time.”
Amit Kumar Das, a PhD scholar in regional connectivity scheme at the Faculty of Management Studies in Delhi, believes the Hindon terminal is suitable for RCS flights and could specifically be used for that purpose even after the Noida airport becomes operational. “The reason is the boom in the economy, which will drive up the need for more connectivity options. Airports close to each other in many big cities globally are co-existing and co-existing well,” said Das, stressing that Hindon should be an integral part of long-term commercial flight operation plans.
“The Hindon terminal can co-exist with IGIA and Noida airports as it can handle short-distance air routes and even helicopter services and chartered planes. Its importance should grow in the coming years, not diminish,” he added.
Das urged the government to offer airlines more incentives to give the Hindon terminal a kickstart. “Under the RCS scheme, subsidy is given by the government for a fixed number of seats. For the remaining seats, airlines are free to charge but up to the fare cap. So, it becomes important for the government to offer more incentives to woo airlines into starting operations at facilities like Hindon.”