Over the past few days, air passengers had been complaining regarding the waiting time at the Indira Gandhi International(IGI) Airport, Delhi.
In response to this, low-budget carrier IndiGo and national carrier Air India has issued a travel advisory, asking passengers to reach the airport at least 3.5hrs prior to domestic departures. It has also advised the passengers to carry only 1 piece of hand baggage with a weight of 7kgs for a smooth security check.
“The Delhi airports are experiencing high footfalls and the check-in and boarding time is expected to be longer than usual”, said Indigo.
“Please ensure that you complete your web check-in, for added convenience. Please use gate numbers 5 and 6 for entry at Delhi Airport, Terminal 3, as these are nearest to the Indigo check-in counters,” it added.
Air India on the other side too has advised international passengers to reach the airport 4 hours before the departure time in order to get their security check process in seamless way.
As per the reports, the reason for this chaos on airport was due to a large number of passengers were travelling but on the other side, there are only few counters and security staff. Also, congestion on airport may be because of the upcoming holiday season(with Christmas and New Year’s just around the corner).
Because of the various complaints that were regularly made on social media, Ministry of Civil Aviation ordered numerous decongestion measures at the IGAI on Saturday.
According to officials, an examination will be done for the requirement of manpower at immigration counters and in cases where it is needed, employment of additional manpower will be made. The officials added about the traffic marshalls who were posted at the departure forecourt in order to decrease vehicular congestion.
On Monday, Civil Aviation Minister of India, Jyotiraditya Scindia made a surprise visit to Terminal 3 of the Delhi Airport and examined measures that were laid out over the last week to ease congestion on the airport and interacted with the airport staff too.
There Scindia said to ANI,”Today we have increased we have increased the number of entry gates from 14 to 16. There was a meeting with officials inside the airport where we have decided that a signboard should be placed at every entry gate displaying the waiting time before entry.”
Jyotiraditya also advised that updates on the wait time be posted on social media in real-time. Besides this, all airlines have been asked to keep their check-in-counters completely staffed, especially during peak hours.
Officials told PTI,” A command centre will monitor crowding at the gates on real-time basis. At Terminal 3 domestic, deployment of additional ATRS (Automatic Tray Retreival System) will be made in order to avoid the congestion on the airport”
