The Airports Authority of India (AAI) is working on a plan to augment the air traffic handling capacity of the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport by 30% in the next three years.
IGI, India’s busiest airport, handles up to 73 movements per hour (a movement includes both departures and arrivals), which is likely to be increased to 95 movements per hour by 2021.
Improved ground infrastructure will comprise building rapid exit taxiways so that landing aircraft can vacate the runway more quickly, enabling closer spacing of flights landing at the airport. Additionally, the airport’s operator Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), also plans to build dual taxi-lanes for uninterrupted taxi flow to and from the aircraft gates as well as add a fourth runway by 2021.
According to a senior AAI official, the focus will be on three broad areas — ground infrastructure, airspace use and air traffic flow management procedures. Flow management will include keeping a close watch on airlines not adhering to time slots given to them, ands clubbing together smaller aircraft such as turbo-props and chartered flights.
‘One of top 5’
“We have set up a flight operations committee to work on this plan. There is also a major consulting effort with [U.K.-based] NATS to train all the stakeholders — Air Traffic Control Officers, ground personnel and pilots — to be able to get to those kind of movements. Two new terminals are also going to be built in Delhi, which is likely to see more than 100 million passenger trips a year and is going to be one of the top five airports in the world,” Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha told The Hindu in an interview recently.
