Flyers fume as airports struggle to cope with holiday rush

Air travel, especially during the holidays, has become a nightmare for many Indians as they navigate through the country’s busiest airports such as Delhi and Mumbai

Amit Tandon was vexed and perplexed.

The government employee (named changed) almost missed his recent Vistara flight to Guwahati despite reaching Delhi Airport well before its departure.

“The queues at the airport terminal check-in, the airline counter and security were excessively long and not managed. I was not even late to the airport, but I still was about to miss the flight,” he said.

Tandon is not alone.

Air travel, especially during the holidays, has become a nightmare for many Indians as they navigate through some of the country’s busiest airports such as 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 key metro airports -- Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru -- spiked to 8.71 crore in the April-October period of the current fiscal year versus 3.95 crore passengers in the year-ago period, PTI reported, 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 rather “tiring, time-consuming and uncomfortable”, Tandon told DH.

After many complained on social media about missing flights due to long queues, the GMR Group-run Delhi Airport on Monday unveiled measures to tackle congestion such as reducing the number of flights during morning rush hours and moving some flights from Terminal-3.

The measures, which include real-time updates on waiting time on social media, an increase in the number of entry gates, more manpower at immigration counters and additional machines for baggage check, came after Scindia inspected the arrangements at T3 earlier on the day.

The Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi with three terminals is one of the busiest airports in the country and handles around 1.90 lakh passengers and about 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 footfall monitoring mechanism and boosting the number of passenger service executives, PTI said.
The post-pandemic single-day traffic at the facility reached 1,50,988 passengers on Dec. 10, which was the third-highest single-day passenger movement for the facility. The highest-ever single day passenger volume was 1,56,329, recorded on Dec 21, 2018.

So, what happened?

Air travel has bounced back 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 tabled by the Ministry of Civil Aviation in Lok Sabha in December 2021.

“Greenfield airports which were developed during the last decade have saturated their existing capacities and need further expansion and augmentation of facilities,” stated a recent report tabled by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Civil Aviation.

Mumbai and Delhi airports are particularly saturated and need capacity enhancement, according to Sathyanarayanan S, the team leader of aviation consultancy CAPA India.
Others stressed on the need for customised plans.

“Western models of airports were force-fitted to Indian conditions,” said Satyendra Pandey, a managing partner at advisory firm AT-TV. “(We) would need a different design altogether in line with the local needs.”

Some others blamed the lack of advance planning.

“India, unfortunately, is chock-a-block and then thinks of expansion. We are not forecasting and creating capacity in advance,” Former AAI executive director Deepak Shastri said.

What can be done?

While some airports are investing in new terminals and some cities are building a second airport, tackling the capacity mismatch will take a while, experts said. In the meantime, passengers will have to cope with delays.

“Earlier, one was expected to report at the airport between 45 minutes to one hour before departure and today it has gone up to two to three hours,” said Mark Martin, the chief executive at aviation consultancy Martin Consulting LLC. “So, clearly something has gone wrong.”

“It is high time the government of India set up its airport quality index thereby ensuring travellers coming into India and travelling within India aren't harassed and made to suffer extensively, including 5-hour check-ins for a 30mins flight,” he said.

Bengaluru edges out Delhi and Mumbai in terms of 'dwell time', a yardstick to measure efficiency at airports, which is simply the duration between when a traveller alights from his/her taxi to the time he/she boards the aircraft, Martin pointed out.

Even as many Indian airports work on enhancing their capacity, they need to work harder at reducing wait times and managing crowds better, especially in the security check and immigration clearance areas, 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 standardised performance criteria for immigration and security personnel.

With the rise in share of private players in airports, so has the reliance on contractual workers for airport management, hurting accountability in some cases. Some others highlighted the need for better staff training and more technology-enabled initiatives such as facial recognition-powered DigiYatra, that allows paperless entry into airports.

(With inputs from agencies)