The shifting of domestic flight operations to the swanky new integrated terminal 3 is likely to be further delayed as the process may now begin only in the last week of October or after Diwali.
"The domestic operations by the airlines is likely to begin from Terminal 3 (T3) from last week of October or after Diwali," official sources said after a meeting that Civil Aviation Ministry officials had with airport operator Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), airlines and other stakeholders earlier this week.
The original plan was to shift the domestic flight operations to T-3 from July 30-31, which was not carried out due to unfinished work.
A new date of August 27 was decided by them but the ministry asked DIAL to keep the shifting in abeyance after civil aviation minister Praful Patel paid a site visit to review the preparedness.
On August 13, Patel along with secretary civil aviation M Madhavan Nambiar, Director General Civil Aviation S Nasim Zaidi, chairman Airports Authority of India VP Agarwal and senior officials from Ministry of Civil Aviation, airlines and DIAL, had reviewed DIAL's preparedness for shifting of operations.
The minister, after his visit and meeting with the officials, decided to hold the shifting of operations in abeyance and set mid-September as the date for another review after which a decision was to be taken.
As per the schedule, three full service carriers -- Air India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher -- were to shift their operations from T1 and T1D to T3 along with their low cost arms from July 30-31.
The terminal building has been facing acute shortage of power supply that hinders the commencement of domestic operations. Delhi Transco Ltd was to commission a 220 kva substation by July 31 but they expressed their inability to make it functional before September last.
Sources said apart from these, the glass-and steel terminal was also facing a host of problems like failure of server. Recently, the server failure hit the check-in and other processes like CCTV operations badly.
Sources said that DIAL had put everything on single server due to which such crashes happen. "Now they have made almost half of their CCTV cameras inactive in order to keep the server functioning."
Presently, the area which was to be used for domestic flyers is being used as a gathering area for Commonwealth Games delegates and athletes. From here, the guests are taken to the bus for their destinations, sources said.
