Low traffic: DIAL changes course mid-way

Plan for interim international terminal cancelled; land trouble delays domestic terminal.

Faced with a sharp decline in the number of flights, Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) has pushed the deadline for completing the construction of the new domestic terminal, 1D, to the first quarter of next year.

The deadline for opening the terminal, which was supposed to house private carriers, has already been postponed once from August to the end of this year.

Sources at the airport also said the plan for an interim international terminal had been discarded due to a decline in traffic.

A DIAL spokesperson said: “The new domestic terminal, 1D, will be operational in the first quarter of 2009. According to the mandate, all existing terminals are being modernised by DIAL and their capacities enhanced.” The spokesperson added that in addition to the mandated upgrade of the existing terminals, DIAL decided to set up a new domestic terminal to meet the traffic demand.

The various expansions, the spokesperson said, would enhance the total capacity of the airport to over 25 million passengers per annum by early 2009, up from 12 million.

On plans for an interim international terminal, he said, “The enhanced overall capacity (in the existing international terminal) will be able to meet the projected demand without setting up the referred temporary terminal (interim international terminal), which was just an option at an evaluation level. The decision to have a temporary terminal was never taken,” he said.

Anticipating a major rise in the number of passengers and flights during 2006 and 2007, DIAL had suggested the setting up of these two terminals, which were not part of the original Operation Management and Development Agreement (OMDA), signed between the government and the GMR group, the airport developer. DIAL executives say there is therefore no deadline under the agreement for constructing the 1D terminal (as it is not a part of the agreement).

The agreement only mentioned the upgrade of existing terminals, and construction of a new runway and an integrated terminal by 2010.

The 1D terminal is being built to handle 10 million passengers annually. This will take the airport’s capacity to 27 million domestic passengers per annum. The terminal was originally scheduled to be up and running by the middle of this year and was delayed as DIAL was allotted land much later than promised and several buildings, like the air force headquarters, had to be demolished before the work could start.

The interim terminal for international passengers was proposed earlier this year after the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, found fault with the modernisation plan.

The interim terminal was being planned to handle additional passenger traffic till the inauguration of the new integrated terminal for domestic and international traffic by 2010. The existing terminal for international passengers, (T2), has been upgraded and can now handle 8 million passengers per annum, up from 5 million per annum.

However, DIAL estimated that the figure for international passengers would be crossed this year itself and would expand to around 11 million by 2009. The makeshift terminal was being looked at to handle the additional traffic of three million passengers before the third integrated terminal came up in 2010.

All these estimates went haywire when beginning June, the recession-hit airlines cut around 25 per cent of their flights across the country. According to figures from the civil aviation ministry, around 70 daily flights (departures) were cancelled, bringing the total number of daily flights at Delhi airport to a mere 230 per day

Industry sources said there was also a lot of ad-hoc cancellation of flights, which decreased the number of total flights further, thus minimising the needs of these new terminals.