New Delhi:
The swanky new terminal 3 at New Delhi's Indira Gandhi Airport has become fully operational. National carrier, the Air India, as well as leading private airlines have shifted their operations to the new terminal.
Though there was chaos and delays when the airlines shifted to T3 on Saturday, things were smoother today, Sunday being a leaner day.
Ever since the Air India moved its entire domestic operations to the new terminal last week, there has been total chaos. Troubles continued to haunt passengers on Saturday as 14 of its domestic flights were delayed by up to three hours while one was cancelled.
The airline said some of the delays happened because the those flights had to wait for passengers from abroad - some flights in some sectors were almost empty if they would not have accommodated passengers coming from abroad.
It, however, says that the numbers of delays are going down day by day and they are hoping to resolve problems in a day or two.
Meanwhile, for private airlines like Kingfisher and Jet, the transition has been "smooth". Kingfisher attributed this to the multi-pronged communication programme which was initiated well before the shift to terminal 3.
These include SMS notification to guests and smooth transfer facility from the earlier terminal 1 to 3. The airline said that these alerts will continue for the fortnight.
"By and large, the transition of operations for our domestic flights to T3 went off smoothly thanks to the well-coordinated and advance planning by all stakeholders involved," a Kingfisher statement said.
The statement also said that the first flight of Kingfisher Airlines which departed from T3 today was IT 302 operating from New Delhi to Mumbai and it took off at 06:05 am.
IT 4316 coming in from Jaipur was the first flight of Kingfisher Airlines to land at T3 today at 07:27am, the statement added.
The statement from Jet Airways said, "Jet Airways and its subsidiary JetLite completed a successful, smooth and uneventful migration of the group's domestic operations to and from Delhi to the state-of-the-art Terminal 3 at Indira Gandhi International Airport on Sunday. All Jet Airways, Jet Airways Konnect and JetLite flight operations to and from Delhi's Terminal 3 are on schedule."
Though T3 - with many modern facilities and communication systems - became fully functional, there were delays in many flight schedules at least by an hour. The authorities partly attribute this to delay in the take off time of many flights from their original destinations. They also say that congestion at the airport also led to delays.
The real test could be on Monday. More chaos could be expected as main test for all flight operators is going to take place tomorrow. The flight operators, however, say they are more prepared to take up the challenge.
FLIGHT DELAYS ON SUNDAY- Air India: 9 of 23 flights delayed by 2 hours
- Jet Airways : 6 flights delayed by 1 hour
- Kingfisher: 7 flights delayed by 1 hour