Few new flights from Delhi airport this winter

There will be very few new flights from Delhi this winter as the country's busiest airport has virtually run out of slots.

Delhi airport sees over 1200 flights daily and its three runways can handle 67 aircraft movements per hour. While the terminal expansion is facing delays, the Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) has expressed inability to allow more flights due to runway capacity constraints.

A senior executive from a private airline said hardly any new slots have been released to carriers in winter schedule. “Delhi airport is going the Mumbai way,” he quipped. Among the lucky ones who have secured slots are Alitalia, VietJet and Jet Airways for international services.

DIAL did not offer comments for the story. 

Last year the airport handled over 55 million passengers and traffic grew 21 per cent – which was fastest among all airports handling 40 million passengers in the world. Traffic  at  Mumbai airport, the second busiest in the country, grew by 9.9 per cent as limited slots led to addition of few services. This fueled the growth in Delhi and airlines like Vistara and AirAsia made it their hubs but a rapid growth put a strain on infrastructure.

A few months ago UK's air traffic control service provider NATS submitted its recommendations to improve ground infrastructure and air navigation procedures at Delhi and the same have been accepted. 

“The civil aviation ministry is working with DIAL on measures to handle more flights  at Delhi,” said Airports Authority of India chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra. He said  discussions are also on with the air force for opening airspace under its control for civilian flights.

A large part of airspace around Delhi is under air force control thus restricting corridors for civilian flights. Also the three runways at Delhi do not see simultaneous take offs or landings because of design issues and arrivals are separated by 3 miles.

“There are slot constraints at Delhi but it is not that none are available,” Mohapatra added.

The congestion at terminal 1 is creating problems too.  “The terminal 1D at Delhi is already saturated resulting in serious impact on airline operations and customer experience. Expansion of terminal will take another 2-3 years. The process of deciding which airline will move to T2 has taken more than 12 months creating development challenges. Opening of Hindon air base for passenger flights  faces challenges due to surface access, higher prospect of bird strikes and splitting airline resources at yet another location,” aviation consultancy CAPA said in its report.

CAPA  has warned of serious capacity challenges for Indian airports as domestic airlines are expected to induct 350-400 planes over the next five years. “Airlines are already facing challenges securing overnight parking bays. This will become increasingly difficult with so many aircraft scheduled for induction over the next five years. As metro airports become saturated airlines will have to deploy more capacity to tier II cities over the next three years,” CAPA has said.