IGI airport revamp: IndiGo told to submit plan for T2 shifting by Monday

Passengers travelling to Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata from Delhi airport by IndiGo, GoAir and Spicejet will have to go to the newly-renovated Terminal 2 from October end for their flights.

Low-cost carrier IndiGo has been given time till October 16 by the Delhi airport operator to submit their plan of partial shifting to Terminal 2 from Terminal 1.

As part of the Terminal 1 expansion of Delhi airport, the operator – Delhi International Airport limited (DIAL) — had asked all low-cost airlines to shift 30% of their flights to T2.(HT Photo)

Passengers travelling to Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata from Delhi airport by IndiGo, GoAir and Spicejet will have to go to the newly-renovated Terminal 2 from October end for their flights.

As part of the Terminal 1 expansion of Delhi airport, the operator – Delhi International Airport limited (DIAL) — had asked all low-cost airlines to shift 30% of their flights to T2.

But since there was no response from the airlines, the ministry of civil aviation had called a meeting where IndiGo sought time till Monday, October 16.

“As requested, IndiGo is given time till October 16. This is, however, without prejudice to our intimation to shift the flights from T1 to T2 with effect from October 29 as stated earlier,” DIAL said while responding to IndiGo’s request.

“The capacity of T1 is 20 million passengers per annum, but it is handling about 24 million passengers. If flights of these three airlines shift to T2, about 15 million passengers will continue to use T1 and renovation work can be carried out side-by-side. The airlines will have to start operations from T2 by October 29,” said an airport official, requesting anonymity.

An email query sent to DIAL and IndiGo remained unanswered till the filing of this report.

Airlines operate in two schedules — winter and summer. The winter schedule starts from last Sunday of October and the summer schedule starts from last Sunday of March. The ministry of civil aviation had said that airlines will have to shift to T2 before the winter schedule.

Terminals 1 and 3 of Delhi airport together have the capacity to handle 62 million passengers per annum. Delhi airport handled 55.6 million passengers in 2016 and the number is likely to cross the 62 million mark this year.

Against the 1,050 average flight movements a day in 2015, the number of flights have increased to 1,185 flights per day in 2017.

ENDS