Calcutta Terminal switch fails to take off

Calcutta: A proposed stop gap arrangement to ease congestion at Calcutta airport by shifting some flights from the overburdened domestic terminal to the international one has been grounded by private airlines’ refusal to compromise on facilities.
“To implement such a plan, you need better infrastructure at the international terminal. The facilities there at this moment are inadequate to handle four to five flights at a time,” said a senior official of a private airline.
Although the domestic terminal has become a fliers’ nightmare during the morning and evening peak hours, most airlines would much rather operate from there than risk shifting flights to a terminal that does not have enough check-in counters and boarding gates, among other facilities.
So couldn’t extra counters have been set up to enable airlines to make the switch? “Where is the space to do so? The international terminal doesn’t have provisions for expansion within the existing set-up,” an official said.
The international terminal has 27 check-in counters and two boarding gates, against 42 counters and nine gates at the domestic terminal. It has a lone aerobridge, which more often than not remains out of order. “In all my years of boarding international flights, I have never seen the aerobridge being used,” said critical care expert Subrata Maitra, a frequent flier.
An airport official admitted that the existing infrastructure was enough to handle only two flights at a time. “On days when four or five are scheduled to take off within minutes of one another, there is chaos all around,” he added.
A visit by Metro last Saturday revealed how fliers were being forced to queue up for up to 45 minutes for a boarding pass during the period when four flights — one each of Emirates, Thai Airways, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa — were scheduled to take off one after the other.
04/01/11 Sanjay Mandal/The Telegraph

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Categories: Airports Jan 2011