Scindia makes surprise visit to Delhi airport amid chaos complaints

Sources said that the Minister along with senior officials took note of the various aspects and directed the officials and the airport operator to take immediate action for better crowd management particularly during the peak hours.

Sources said that the officials have been advised to increase the number of entry gates and also to increase the number of machines at check-in points. Moreover, the concerned authorities have been advised to reduce the number of flights during the peak time.

Earlier, during the last week, the civil aviation ministry along with the airport operator DIAL had made a 4-point action plan as immediate remedial measures at the Delhi airport.

As per the plan, the current 14 X-ray screening systems will be enhanced by two additional X-ray screening systems. This will take the total X-ray systems to 16. Reserve Lounge demolition and one ATRS machine and two standard X-ray machines will also be added. The plan also included two entry points Gate 1A and Gate 8B will be converted for passenger usage and debunching of flights to progressively reduce the peak hour departures to 14.

Meanwhile, complaints of chaos and crowd mismanagement at the Delhi airport kept pouring in as air-passengers faced long queues and prolonged waiting time inside the airport premises.

Aviation traffic has recorded a steady growth in the last couple of days and many airports, including Delhi and Mumbai, have started witnessing longer queues of air-passengers. The number of air-passengers at the airports has already crossed the mark of four lakh passengers per day even during the weekdays.

Delhi airport is one of the busiest airports in the country and handles over 1,100 daily flights. Among the terminals, T3 is the busiest and between December 1-7, T3 handled nearly 500 domestic and about 250 international flights. Sources said that keeping in mind the crowd, the operators have planned to shift the flights from T3 terminal.

Earlier this week on December 7, taking note of the inconvenience faced by the air passengers at busy airports in the country, Union Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia discussed the capacities deployed and requirements to process air passengers smoothly in an important meeting with different stakeholders. The meeting was also attended by different stakeholders, including the CISF, BCAS and airport operators and others.