IGI decongestion hits hurdle

New Delhi: The ongoing mergers and acquisitions of Indian carriers in recent days may be good news for the aviation industry but have temporarily paid put the Delhi Airport's plans for decongesting the 1-B terminal. The management had been talking to Air Sahara for shifting from 1-B to the far more spacious terminal 1-A that's used by Indian Airlines and Kingfisher. But with Jet Airways acquiring Sahara, this plan been almost shelved.
The problem with 1-B is that it gets massively overcrowded in peak morning and evening hours as a large number of private domestic carriers operate from here. As a result, the terminal handles far more passengers than its capacity that leads to serpentine queues at the place. In fact, very often the long queues even delay flights as passengers can't reach planes in time.
Now, shifting Air Deccan to 1-A is also not an easy option now. The airline is the biggest no frills carrier and has large number of flights and passengers. Now with its tie-up with Kingfisher, sources said, the decision to shift it becomes even tougher.
"Now we look only at some airlines like Spice, Indigo, GoAir or Paramount for sending them to 1-A. Talks with them could begin shortly," said sources. In fact, aviation minister Praful Patel had earlier this year said that some carriers needed to be shifted to 1-A to ease pressure on the other domestic terminal and also offer better facilities to passengers there.
04/06/07 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jun 2007