19 Air India flights delayed on Sunday

New Delhi: Delhi’s miserable international airport has begun to export its suffering abroad. Airlines are complaining that delayed takeoffs from India’s capital is leading to missed time-slots and major parking problems at super-busy European hubs. The result is more delays, and a terrible cascade effect on airline skeds all around.
“We are missing our slots at Heathrow and Frankfurt as flights from Delhi are getting delayed regularly. We are writing to the Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) every day,” D.S. Kohli, Air India executive director (northern), said.
“Once you miss a time slot at these airports, the aircraft cannot be parked in the bay, and the next departure gets delayed by two or three hours,” Kohli added.
A spokesperson of a major European career agreed: “Slot-management in EU airports is fully automatic and once you miss your take-off slot, no excuse in the world can help you,” he said.
Twenty-four hours after the Hindustan Times published a special report on the shameful mess at the airport, the situation had not improved at all.
Every single one of AI’s 19 flights out of Delhi between midnight and dawn of March 2-3 was delayed because of the terrible overcrowding at the terminal entrance, check-in counters and immigration desks.
04/03/08 Hindustan Times/MSN India

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Categories: Air India - International Mar 2008, Airports Mar 2008, Foreign Mar 2008, NACIL Mar 2008