The suspense finally ended for Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways on Wednesday with the ministry of civil aviation giving them the green signal to shift their domestic operations to the new integrated Terminal 3 on Sunday. The present domestic terminal ID will then become the first exclusive low-cost carrier terminal in the country from where the remaining domestic airlines, including GoAir, will carry out their operations.
In a marathon meeting at T3 on Wednesday morning led by civil aviation secretary M Madhavan Nambiar, senior ministry and DGCA officials along with representatives of Delhi International Airport (P) Ltd (DIAL) and the three airlines Air India, Jet and Kingfisher arrangements were reviewed and it was agreed that they will stick to the original plans `lest there was any further embarrassment'. The shifting of domestic operations to T3 has been postponed four times since the original date of July 1, 2010.
On Wednesday, a day before the national carrier was expected to move into T3, hectic preparations were on at the terminal. Only one commercial lounge was ready while work on the airline lounges was still going on. They were expected to be ready "soon''. Airline officials also said work on their back offices and some engineering work, which had been done in a hurry at the last minute, was not up to the mark, though there was no option but to move into the terminal with whatever facilities that had been made available. Food counters were also being set up on Wednesday. DIAL officials maintained that all work pertaining to smooth passenger movement had been completed.
The other problem due to which operations had been postponed on two earlier occasions the possible traffic mess with an increase of about 20,000 departures from the terminal has been remedied only partially. Only one carriageway of the northern underpass is functional at present while the second one will be made operational only after a few days. "Other than a stretch of about 50m, the underpass is ready but one side has a problem of no traffic signals. The Dwarka underpass has to be connected to NH-8 because of which some minor issues are pending. This will be sorted out soon. However, with about 2,000 passengers extra per hour headed for T3 and roughly 3,000 vehicles, there are bound to be some initial problems,'' said sources.
With Air India moving to T3 on Wednesday night, GoAir will also shift its operations from terminal IA to terminal ID and all its flights on Thursday will operate from the new domestic terminal.
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