Delhi airport to be refurbished by 2021

In order to efficiently manage the increasing traffic at Delhi airport, a plan has been put in place to revamp a terminal, build a runway, and double the capacity of the domestic terminal.

To deal with the increasing traffic at Delhi airport, the authorities are planning to expand the passenger handling capacity of two operational terminals, rework operations at terminal-2, and build a new runway by 2021.

The Indira Gandhi International Airport, the busiest in the country, will soon see the reconstruction process begin. The airport has lately witnessed a growth in its operations, recording 57.7 million passengers in 2016-17, and the decision to up the facilities shall help deal with the current problems of managing traffic and operations.

“Significant growth in the operation of low-cost carriers translated into exponential growth of passenger traffic for the airport,” said I Prabhakara Rao, chief executive officer of Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL).

Terminal -1, which has the capacity of handling 20 million passengers a year, will be able to handle about 40 million passengers after the reconstruction.

“We have fully refurbished T2, which now has the capacity to handle 12 million passengers a year. We have asked the airlines to shift one-third of their operations to T2. After the renovation we will shift the airlines back to T1,” Rao said.

The operations shall be shifted starting October for no-frills airline Spicejet, Indigo and GoAir . Indigo and Spicjet also fly on international routes, and will have their operations from T1, T2 and T3 for the next three years.

In order to handle the increasing traffic, the functioning capacity of T1 and T3 is being increased.

“We have increased the hourly movement of aircraft, but it is not sufficient. A new runway will increase aircraft movement from 73 to 110 an hour,” Rao said.

Delhi airport will become the first airport in the country to have four runways. The airport presently faces chronic congestion, forcing aircrafts to circle for 15 minutes before landing. The new processes that are being put in place for easy connectivity also include new taxiways to reduce the occupancy of runways, and in turn help increase number of flight movements.