Preparing for Summer Travel? Here's the Centre's Plan to Avoid Crowded Airports

The civil aviation ministry has formulated a three-step plan to tackle airport congestion across major metro cities.

"Flying from Delhi airport was relatively hassle-free up until February 2020. But after COVID, things have changed drastically there. It seems like the airport is always congested – and I always have this fear of missing my flight," Ankita Das, a resident of CR Park in South Delhi, told The Quint.

A communications professional with an IT firm, Das has to frequently travel to Mumbai and Chennai as part of her job.

"I remember the days when I used to make it to the airport two hours prior to the flight. But nowadays, most airlines are issuing advisories asking passengers to reach the airport up to three hours ahead of schedule."

In December, Terminal 3 of New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport became a site of chaos and confusion as domestic and international passengers were met with long lines for security checks, delays in boarding, and technical glitches. "The main choking points were at the airport entry gates and the security screening," Air India's former executive director Jitender Bhargava, who travelled from Mumbai to Delhi on Thursday, 8 December, had told The Quint.

But the phenomenon was not limited to Delhi. The same story played out at different airports, especially in India's top metro cities – Mumbai, Chennai, and Bengaluru.

Now, with the aviation industry anticipating record demand during the summer months and after, the civil aviation ministry has come up with a three-step plan to tackle airport congestion, according to a report by LiveMint. What is the plan about? How will it help ease congestion? And what exactly is leading to overcrowding of airports at major metro cities? We explain.

Air Travel Is Appealing, but...

Sidharth Kapur, a senior adviser in the aviation sector, pointed out to The Quint that passenger traffic had grown at over 12 percent per year during the decade before the COVID pandemic, and at 16 percent over the last five years of that decade.

"Rising GDP and per capita income, coupled with a young aspirational population and supportive government policy, have contributed to strong passenger growth."

Sidharth Kapur

Kapur, however, argued that in terms of airport infrastructure, India is still lagging behind. He pointed out that brownfield (facilities that are created by upgrading or updating an existing facility) private airports, which manage more than half of the country's capacity, need to add capacity to allow growth in passenger traffic and new aircraft.

"This is more important in metro airports because they play a pivotal role in network planning for transfer traffic, whether international to domestic and vice versa or domestic to domestic," he explained.

There have also been delays in the expansion of these private brownfield airports owing to a multitude of reasons, including COVID which directly impacted construction, he further said. "However, post-COVID, traffic has rebounded at a fast pace, and this may not have been expected by private players. This may be the reason behind the overcrowding."

But it is not just infrastructure that is to be blamed for the chaos at airports. There aren't enough trained personnel at these facilities, thanks to the COVID-induced layoffs.

According to Amitabh Khosla, the International Air Transport Association's (IATA) India Director, there is a "need to ensure that the present infrastructure, including security lanes, immigration counters, check-in counters, is fully manned and utilised."

He further told The Quint that immigration and security processes need to be reassessed.

What About Centre's Decongestion Plan?

Elaborating on the three-step plan, a civil aviation official told LiveMint that:

• Increase the number of screening points to ensure distribution of air passengers entering the terminal building

• Implement a digitised pre-queuing process

• Limit the number of flights during peak demand hours

They added that the Centre is also keen on air tickets with digital codes that can be scanned at the airport entry to reduce queues.

The official told the news website that aviation authorities are requesting their home ministry counterparts to increase the number of security personnel at the facilities and expand infrastructure to reduce waiting time inside the terminal.

Additionally, authorities are also working towards installing modern scanning devices at security areas so that travellers need not take out electronic devices, such as laptops from their bags, before screening.

What Are Some of the Other Measures?

Earlier this month, the civil aviation ministry listed out some other measures it has undertaken to deal with the congestion at airports, including in Delhi and Mumbai. These include:

• Deploying additional traffic marshals at the departure forecourt to avoid vehicular congestion

• Display boards providing least waiting time at entry gates at vantage points to guide passengers in advance

• Additional entry for passenger entry

• Creation of new security zone at Delhi airport new security inside Terminal 3

• Installation and commissioning of additional X-ray machines for baggage check to address bottleneck at security points

• Adding 15 X-BIS (X-ray baggage inspection systems) at Delhi airport, taking the total number of machines to 25 in T-3 domestic and 19 in T-3 international

• Commissioning of a domestic-to-domestic (D2D) transfer facility at Mumbai airport, thereby cutting down the minimum connection time for transfer of passengers and crew members

• Addition of three new security lanes at Mumbai airport for reducing waiting time for passengers

• Deployment of additional manpower by the CISF

• Monitoring through CCTV & Command Centre

• Use of count meter for crowd management

• Airport operators advised to re-balance peak hour traffic between terminals by shifting slots to optimise flights during peak hours

• Airlines advised to deploy sufficient manpower at all check-in/baggage drop counters

What's the Need to Plan Ahead?

As mentioned earlier, the aviation industry is anticipating a record demand during the summer months and after.

"... I predict record yield and traffic in the summer this year," Ajay Singh, Chairman and Managing Director of SpiceJet, said at the CAPA India Aviation Summit on 20 March.

Domestic airlines transported a record 13 million passengers in March 2023 – up by over 11 percent from the corresponding months in 2018 and 2019 – as per data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

With heavy air travel expected, it would be safe to say that the government does not want a repeat of December 2022.