Airlines shift adds to chaos at the Indira Gandhi International airport

The shifting of Kingfisher and Jet Airways to Terminal 3 on Sunday added to the chaos at the Indira Gandhi International airport.

The shifting of Kingfisher and Jet Airways to Terminal 3 on Sunday added to the chaos at the Indira Gandhi International airport. Teething troubles such as technical glitches in the telephone line and Internet connections affected the check-in process and led to delays. Almost 90% of the flights that operated on Sunday were delayed by 15 minutes to two hours.

โ€œI arrived from the US around midnight and had booked a ticket to Jammu with Kingfisher Airlines. The airline staff kept us waiting and after two hours they said the flight had been cancelled. We reached Delhi after 16 hours of journey, but the situation here is really bad. We spent the entire night at the terminal and don’t know when our flight will take off,โ€ said Priti Pal Singh, an NRI.

The flights of Kingfisher and Jet Airways witnessed delay of 15 minutes to one hour and Air India’s flight was delayed for over two hours.

Lucknow- and Patna-bound passengers staged a protest as they couldn’t find any airline staff to give them their flight’s status. โ€œWe are expecting the problems to start ebbing in a week as we are taking various measures,โ€ said an Air India spokesperson.

Baggage continued to be the main problem and as the frequency of flight increased on Sunday, after shifting of two more carriers, the shortage of baggage belts left the passengers harried.

โ€œAt belt number six, baggage of five flights was running at one point of time. It was difficult to locate baggage. The airport should have dedicated belts for dedicated flights,โ€ said Ashok Drolia who had arrived from Jet Lite S2 792 from Indore.

Though the Jet Airways Chennai-bound flight was cancelled after being delayed for more than three hours on Saturday, the airline’s claimed the transition was smooth.

โ€œJet Airways completed a successful and smooth migration of the group’s domestic operations to and from Delhi to Terminal 3,โ€ said an airline spokesperson.

โ€œBy and large, the transition of operations for our domestic flights to T3 went off smoothly. We have put in place a multi-pronged communication system to inform passengers,โ€ said the Kingfisher spokesperson.

โ€œThe airline staff told us they are shifting to new terminal and refused to give information about flight,โ€ said a passenger who did not want to be named.

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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