New Delhi: Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) chief executive officer (CEO) Videh Kumar Jaipuriar on Friday said that the airport is aiming to increase its international passenger handling capacity by 40% to 50%, with more international airlines wanting to connect with India.
The airport has a maximum capacity handling of around 105 million passengers, and the international passenger capacity is around 22 million, the airport chief said.
“We are running out of international capacity. We are looking at various ways to increase the capacity, and the plan is to increase it by 40% to 50% in six months to one year. We have consultants working to get the best solution in terms of operational as well as passenger convenience and also the airside infrastructure matching with that of the terminal infrastructure,” Jaipuriar said at the CAPA India Aviation Summit in Delhi.
Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) consists of three terminals– T1, T2 and T3. The expanded terminal 1 is expected to be operational by the end of the month. “We are hoping that sometime during this month itself, T1 will be operational,” the CEO said, adding that all low-cost airlines, including IndiGo, will operate from the expanded T1.
Talking about the international flights from T3, the DIAL chief said, “We have around 20% of transit or connecting passengers whether domestic to international or domestic to domestic, and some of the segments are seeing faster growth”. The airport saw international passenger traffic of close to 20 million last year.
DIAL, a consortium led by the GMR Group, is working on a 10-year master plan, which is being discussed and will be finalised after discussions with the airlines.
“Looking at the kind of change in dynamics that has happened in the last five to six years, we have advanced our master plan that was otherwise planned in 2026. We are therefore taking inputs from all airlines and planning,” Jaipuriar said, adding that they are not closed to options such as dedicated terminals for airlines or even dedicated terminals for international and domestic connections.
The airport is expected to have four fully operational runways by July with one side of the fourth runway being CAT III compliant. A CAT III compliant runway enables flights to land even in poor visibility with a runway visual range of 50m to 200m.
Talking about enhancing the airport’s capacity on the air side of the airport, Jaipuriar said that the airport currently has a capacity of 1,500 slots per day. An airport slot is a permit to use an airport’s infrastructure for take-off or landing at a specific time and date.
“There is a potential to increase the slots by 500-600 slots per day. We currently see 84 aircraft movements (departure and arrival) every hour and we see the potential of over 110 aircraft movements in the final stage of our runway optimisation,” he said.
The airport, Jaipuriar said, is also in the process of introducing the Airport Operations Centre (APOC) system that collects data over time to estimate footfall of passengers at specific time frames. This helps in decongesting the airport and allows various airport officials to be better prepared for the peak hour rush.
The airport has also planned to connect the passengers internally with the help of automated people mover (APM) systems between terminals one and three. This is in line with the government’s aim to make Delhi airport an aviation hub. The airport officials have even presented their plan to the government.
“We have done the commercial evaluation of APM. We expect that some funding will be required…We may approach the government for one-time funding support for APM.. the infrastructure is owned by the AAI (Airports Authority of India), and we are just the operator 2066,” the DIAL CEO said.
