Officials hold meeting on shifting; Air India to move to T3 tonight

In an attempt to streamline shifting of domestic operations of full service carriers at terminal 3 (T3) of the IGI airport here, senior civil aviation ministry officials today met with various stakeholders and suggested measures to save passengers from facing inconveniences.

The director general of civil aviation S Naseem Zaidi held the meeting at T3 along with officials from airlines, airport operator DIAL and other stakeholder to plan smooth shifting of operations, first by Air India from Thursday and then by Jet and Kingfisher by Sunday.

All the airlines expressed their readiness to shift their operations as per the schedule, sources said.

Air India will shift all its domestic operations to swanky T3 from T1A from midnight tonight. The first domestic flight, Mumbai-Delhi IC-623, would arrive at 00.55 am while Delhi-Goa flight (IC-867) would be the first flight to depart from T3 tomorrow at 4.55 am.

The airline has asked its passengers to arrive 75 minutes before the scheduled departure of their flights, as the check-in counters would be closed 45 minutes and boarding gates 10 minutes before departure.

Officials feel that there might be confusion among the passengers regarding shifting of operations from new terminal.

"All the passengers have been informed through our call centre and also by short message service (sms) about this change," an airline official said.

In case, some passengers report to old terminal (T1A), we have made special transport arrangement to take them to T3 by taxis free-of-cost, he added.

Apart from it, the national carrier has put up proper signages regarding the shift en-route both the terminals.

The airline has also decided to accommodate the passenger in the next available flight if he/she misses the flight due to the shifting.

Air India shifted some of its domestic operations from October 31 but was unable to manage things at T3 due to which flights got delayed and passengers had to face inconvenience for past 10 days.

After the national carrier, full service domestic carrier Jet Airways and its low cost arms — JetLite and Jet Konnect — would shift from Sunday.

Jet would operate the first domestic flight (9W 709) from Delhi at 05.40 am while the first incoming flight (S2-138) would arrive at T 3 at 0820 hours.

Jet would be the largest domestic airline operating more than 74 flights daily out of Delhi. Also, it has plans to develop T3 into one of its primary international hubs.