The construction of extra floor space, violating the sanctioned master plan, may have helped make New Delhi’s new airport terminal, T3, among the world’s biggest airport terminals, but bad planning seems to have given T3 a new meaning — “terribly tedious terminal”! While a cost audit report submitted to the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority has its focus on the escalation of cost of construction as a consequence of the extra floor space built, most passengers using the terminal complain about the long distances that have to be covered in negotiating the terminal, both inside and outside. The distance from the car park to the terminal, the logistics of entry and exit of vehicles and the parallel bays for various categories of vehicles have all irritated visitors to the airport. More importantly, the inadequacy of the walkalators both in the departure and arrival areas, shortage of wheelchairs and vehicles to cart passengers who cannot walk the distance, and the use of carpets in the terminal making the wheeling of hand baggage difficult have made the T3 experience excessively tedious.
Passengers also point to poor maintenance, shoddy workmanship, inadequate lounge facilities and inefficient baggage handling as other drawbacks. Despite the humongous size of the airport, business lounges in the international and domestic wings of the terminal are cramped and unimaginatively planned, with poor maintenance and facilities on offer. Crowded, ill-equipped and poorly maintained business lounges are now a problem with most Indian airports, and T3 is no exception. None of India’s new airport lounges comes anywhere close to what good airports in South-east Asia have long offered to business class passengers. Even the ones managed by upmarket hotel chains like the Oberois, Taj and ITC do not offer world-class experience.
Given that passengers are being asked to fork out higher fees for the use of the new private terminals, not just in New Delhi but in other cities as well, airport authorities must ensure better maintenance and improve the experience of using the terminals. Finally, inefficient security handling, with a shortage of staff and security counters, remains the most important bottleneck in most airports, including T3. For all the hype about airport modernisation, the only new experience that most passengers have at these new airports is the range of shopping and cuisine on offer, but at exorbitant prices. The entire experience of airport modernisation in India shows that there is some distance that has to be covered by companies handling projects in offering Indians world-class experience. As G M Rao, the chairman of the GMR Group that built the Delhi airport, himself said to this newspaper, an airport is not just a building and a road (runway), it is about people and technology and about managing the two. The quality of service and efficiency of organisation are key to a good airport experience. Constructing fancy buildings is one thing, maintaining them day after day is something else. Clearly, India’s new airports, like its new airlines, need better and cost-effective management. Privatisation in itself is not the final answer to the problems of poor quality of service. Better trained staff and better management are what India’s civil aviation sector needs.
