by Amit Tandon was annoyed and puzzled.
Government employee (name changed) almost missed his recent Vistara flight to Guwahati despite reaching Delhi airport well ahead of his departure.
“Queues at airport terminal check-in, airline counter and security checkpoints were excessively long and unmanaged. I wasn’t even late for the airport, but I was about to miss my flight anyway,” she said.
Tandon is not alone.
Air travel, especially during holidays, has become a nightmare for many Indians as they navigate through some of the busiest airports in the country like Delhi and Mumbai.
Things got so bad that the civil aviation minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia, had to call an emergency meeting last week with the heads of all major Indian airports, CISF and immigration officials.
Passenger volume from four major metro airports – Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru – has soared to 8.71 crore in April-October of the current fiscal year compared to 3.95 crore passengers in the one-year period ago, reported PTI, citing data from the Airports Authority of India.
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What was once the fastest and most comfortable mode of travel has become quite “tiring, time-consuming and inconvenient,” Tandon said. DH.
After many complained on social media about missed flights due to long queues, Delhi Airport, operated by GMR Group, unveiled measures on Monday to tackle congestion such as reducing the number of flights during the morning rush hour and the relocation of some flights from Terminal-3.
The measures, which include real-time updates on wait times on social media, an increase in the number of entry gates, more staff at immigration counters and additional baggage screening machines, came after Scindia inspected the arrangements at T3 at the start of the day.
Delhi’s three terminal Indira Gandhi International Airport is one of the busiest airports in the country and handles around 1.90 lakh passengers and around 1,200 flights daily. AAI did not respond to DH’s additional requests seeking comment.
Mumbai Airport also unveiled measures on Monday such as introducing a passenger traffic monitoring mechanism and increasing the number of passenger service executives, PTI She said.
Post-pandemic one-day traffic at the facility reached 1,50,988 passengers on Dec. 10, which was the third-highest one-day passenger movement for the facility. The highest single-day passenger volume ever was 1,56,329, recorded on December 21, 2018.
So what happened?
Air travel has recovered after the pandemic-induced lull, but many of India’s loss-making airports are struggling to cope due to poor capacity planning and other factors.
While 102 airports reported a loss of Rs 3,855.75 crore, four airports reported a profit of Rs 8.4 crore, according to data presented by the Civil Aviation Ministry in Lok Sabha in December 2021.
“The greenfield airports that have been developed during the last decade have saturated their existing capacities and are in need of further expansion and augmentation of facilities,” said a recent report presented by Parliament’s Standing Committee on Civil Aviation.
Mumbai and Delhi airports are particularly saturated and in need of capacity upgrading, according to Sathyanarayanan S, chief executive officer of aviation consultancy CAPA India.
Others have emphasized the need for customized plans.
“Western models of airports have been forcibly adapted to Indian conditions,” said Satyendra Pandey, managing partner of consultancy AT-TV. “(We) would need a completely different design in line with local needs.”
Some others blamed the lack of forward planning.
“India, sadly, is crammed full and then thinking about expansion. We do not anticipate and build capacity in advance,” said Deepak Shastri, former executive director of the AAI.
What can be done?
Although some airports are investing in new terminals and some cities are building a second airport, addressing the capacity mismatch will take time, experts say. Meanwhile, passengers will have to deal with delays.
“Previously, one was expected to show up at the airport between 45 minutes and an hour before departure and today it was up to two to three hours,” said Mark Martin, chief executive officer of aviation consultancy Martin Consulting LLC . “So, clearly something went wrong.”
“It is high time for the Government of India to establish its Airport Quality Index thus ensuring travelers entering India and traveling within India are not harassed and made to suffer extensively including 5 hour check-ins for a 30-minute flight,” he said. .
Bangalore surpasses Delhi and Mumbai in terms of ‘dwell time’, a metric for measuring efficiency at airports, which is simply the time between when a traveler gets out of his taxi and gets into his plane, stressed Martin .
Even as many Indian airports work to improve their capacity, they need to work harder to reduce wait times and better manage crowds, especially in the areas of security checkpoints and immigration clearances, experts said.
“We are building glorious palaces, but the infrastructure is not efficient,” said aviation consultant Rohit Tomar, who urged airports to put in place standardized performance criteria for immigration and security staff.
As the share of private actors at airports has increased, so has the reliance on contract workers for airport management, hurting liability in some cases. Some others highlighted the need for better staff training and more technology-enabled initiatives like facial recognition-based DigiYatra, which allows paperless entry into airports.
(With input from agencies.)
