Steps to cut congestion at Delhi airport showing results: Scindia

Scindia also said it was unfair that people need to arrive at airports three-to-four hours before their flight departs, and the ministry was working with all stakeholders to ease the situation

Union civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Wednesday said that steps taken by the government to ease congestion at the Delhi airport were starting to show results, and expressed confidence that the crisis would be resolved to a large extent over the next week.

The aviation minister’s remarks, in comments on social media and to TV channels, come at a time when the queues at Delhi’s airport -- they have been stretching for hours with many passengers complained of chaos, flaring tempers, and missed flights -- appeared to be relatively shorter on Wednesday. (ANI)

Scindia also said it was unfair that people need to arrive at airports three-to-four hours before their flight departs, and the ministry was working with all stakeholders to ease the situation.

The aviation minister’s remarks, in comments on social media and to TV channels, come at a time when the queues at Delhi’s airport -- they have been stretching for hours with many passengers complained of chaos, flaring tempers, and missed flights -- appeared to be relatively shorter on Wednesday.

“In the last 24-36 hours, all agencies have swung into action to mitigate congestion at every checkpoint at all major airports. Congestion at entry points and check-in counters at T3 has eased. Four additional X-Ray machines have been added at the security hold area; display boards showing wait times have come up, and the deployment of CISF (Central industrial Security Force) manpower has already been increase and will progressively rise further in the next few days,” Scindia wrote in a post on Linkedin on Wednesday.

He said that there were largely two factors for the issues seen over the past few days. First, air travel has rebounded after Covid – “the previous record for a single day 4.1 lakh passengers, which was already surpassed recently when it reached 4.28 lakh. For several days recently, the number of passengers taking flights daily was above four lakh”, he said during an interview with ET NOW.

Second, airports appeared to have not been able to anticipate this surge and that there were problems in slot allocation during peak hours. “Airport capacity has till now been determined by the number of flights that can land or take off, but it must be decided on the basis of passenger throughput,” he said, adding that the current problem required all stakeholders to work together instead of identifying blame.

“Landings and departures from 5am to 9am on every aircraft have increased by 15% and, to add to that, the load factor in every flight, which is around 70- 80%, has grown by over 10% and therefore another need is to control departures and arrivals,” Scindia said during the interview.

Hence, the minister added, the Delhi airport operators has been asked to shift peak hour flights to other times of the day or shift some of these flight departures from T3 to T1 and T2.

Scindia assured that passengers won’t have to face the hassle after a week. “Passengers won’t have to arrive at the airport hours before the departure time after a week,” he said.

The minister detailed these improvements as being targeted to multiple chokepoints. The first, entry into the terminal building, is being eased by creating more ingress points (from 16 to 18). Second, security checkpoint queues have been expanded to 17 from 13, and, third, airlines have been asked to ensure their counters are adequately staffed at times so that baggage drops happen on time.

“Our long-term plan is to have 23 x-ray machines, which means 23 security lines at T3. We had 13 security lines a week back, which was increased to 17 lines in these six days which we aim to further increase to 20 by the month end,” Scindia said.

“There is a demand and there is a supply. People are eager to travel and airlines are eager to provide service -- their planes had been on the ground for the longest. Now it is the job of the airport operator to make sure there is no bottleneck between the passenger that wants to travel and the airline that wants to fly them,” he said, adding that this was likely due to operators not anticipating a record-breaking surge in air travel.

Scindia also said that the same steps will be taken at Mumbai and Bengaluru airport as well. “I have a spreadsheet for each of the airports with timelines and deadlines with the agency responsible for the timelines which I am monitoring on a half day basis.”

Several videos from flyers have been posted on social media in recent weeks, raising concerns about the congestion. Scindia had also chaired a meeting with stakeholders last week, including the operators of metropolitan city airports, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and immigration officials.

The meeting was triggered by passengers flooding social media about descriptions of chaos at the airport, with many saying they waited hours in crowded lines and some, having kept aside the typical two hours for pre-boarding formalities, having missed their flights due to the chaos.