IndiGo moves SC against Delhi HC order asking it to move from T1 to T 2

No-frill carrier IndiGo has moved the Supreme Court challenging a Delhi High Court order that it cannot claim a monopoly over Terminal-1 (T-1) of the IGI Airport, which cannot be given exclusively to it.

The airline's appeal against the February 13 order of the division bench of the High Court has been filed and is likely to be taken up for hearing on February 23.

A larger bench of the High Court had upheld the decision of the single judge order observing that the decision of Delhi International Airport Ltd's (DIAL) to partially shift IndiGo operations from T-1 to T-2 cannot be said to be unreasonable only because it may operate harshly against that airline.

"If we may twist the American idiom, 'my way or the highway' to fit the present context, then IndiGo cannot be heard to say that it is either their way or the runway.

"IndiGo are tending to forget that this part relocation from T-1 to T-2 proposed by DIAL is only a temporary measure and once T-1 is renovated and commences its operations after capacity building, all the airlines can operate from there full throttle and take wings," a bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Rekha Palli had said while upholding the order of a single judge accepting DIAL's decision.

The High Court had turned down the suggestion of IndiGo that T-1 be dedicated exclusively for its use and low-cost carrier SpiceJet be asked to move its entire operations to T-2, and had said this sprang from IndiGo's own commercial considerations and not made in the larger public good.

It had said SpiceJet was as much a business rival of IndiGo as GoAir was a competitor of these two private carriers. IndiGo may be on top of the heap if the volume of passenger traffic is seen, but this would not entitle it to claim monopoly over T-1 to the exclusion of the rest, it had added.

The decision had come on IndiGo's plea challenging its single judge order of December 20 last year, upholding DIAL's October 21, 2017 decision to partially shift the operations of Indigo, GoAir and SpiceJet from T-1 to T-2 at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here.