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Delhi airport’s proposed move to ask low-cost airlines to split their domestic operations between two terminals could lead to confusion for travellers.
Kapil Kaul, Chief Executive Officer and Director, Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, South Asia, feels that it will be operationally challenging for IndiGo and SpiceJet to split their domestic and international operations between three terminals in Delhi.
DIAL proposalOn Tuesday, I Prabhakara Rao, Chief Executive Officer, Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), said low-cost domestic airlines will have to shift some of their operations from their existing terminal (Terminal 1 D) to Terminal 2 here from the end of October this year.
Spicejet, IndiGo and GoAir will have to ensure that one-third of their existing flights shift from Terminal 1D to another so that each airline has enough access to space at the airport.
No clarityAt the moment there is no clarity on which domestic flights of the three carriers will operate from Terminal 1 D and which will take off or land in Terminal 2.
IndiGo, which has the maximum number of domestic flights from Delhi has been keen that the other low-cost airlines shift to Terminal 2 from Terminal 1 D and it alone be allowed to operate its domestic flights from this terminal. This move is being resisted by the other low-cost airlines. At the moment Terminal 2 is used for Haj operations.
Industry suggestionSharat Dhall, Chief Operating Officer Yatra.com is of the opinion that initially there could be some confusion among flyers. He suggests that the airport operator look at allocating one specific terminal to a specific low-cost domestic airline operating from the national capital to avoid this scenario.
Claiming that going to 1 D gave him the jitters, Deep Kalra, founder and Chief Executive Officer, MakeMyTrip, suggests that one good way out of the problem is to move away from alpha numericals and numbers for the terminals to giving them names.
“In New York, there are three airports. In London, there is more than one airport but people do not miss flights,” he said in favour of naming the airports and doing away with apha numericals and numbers for various terminals.
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