Winter may be less chaotic at IGI this year

New Delhi : This winter may be a little less chaotic for both airlines and passengers at the IGI airport. With the new runway hopefully
operational, more CAT III parking bays for aircraft and fewer flights due to the aviation industry crisis, it might just be easier to handle fog delays.
Airlines, however, say that even with all this in place, if the airport itself is not ready to manage the large number of stranded passengers, the situation may not be particularly different from previous years. The new domestic terminal 1B that was to have come up to deal with the winter chaos has been delayed till next year. The new runway will probably be in use but with its track record of failing lights, airlines are not too confident about its reliability either.
Last year, the airport witnessed very few heavy fog days due to which flight interruptions were not too many. While no predictions have been made for this year yet, airlines have reduced their number of flights by 5-20%. And most of the airlines have CAT compliant aircraft and trained pilots.
The one airline that does not have CAT III operations is Spice Jet.
Airlines like Jet Airways and Air India will have about 15% less flights than last year.
According to sources, Kingfisher Airlines too had seen a reduction of about 21% in its passenger carrying capacity though it had also almost made up.
Airlines, however, said that fewer flights may not have the much desired reduction in chaos during fog if the airport was not prepared for it.
31/10/08 Neha Lalchandani/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Oct 2008