What's causing congestion at Delhi Airport? Jet Airways CEO, Paytm boss discuss

Massive congestion at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport has led to thousands of complaints from inconvenienced passengers. Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia met airport officials earlier this week in a bid to find a solution – but if social media posts are anything to go by, the problem of congestion is yet to be resolved. Today, Jet Airways CEO Sanjiv Kapoor and Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma joined the conversation on what’s causing long delays at Delhi Airport.

Sanjiv Kapoor, in a Twitter post shared this morning, blamed congestion on the onerous tasks passengers are expected to perform while checking in at Delhi Airport, especially at terminal 3. Delhi Airport is the country’s busiest, and T3 is the busiest of its three terminals.

Kapoor said almost half the bags at T3 are sent back for secondary checks, which further slows down the long queues at the airport.

“What I see is security at Delhi T3 has more onerous requirements than other Indian airports, eg all electronics including wires need to be out,” he wrote. “And too many bags - almost half? - sent for secondary checks. This slows things down and clogs up the x-ray belt.”

Further, because the processing is slow and manual and the belts get clogged and backed-up, DEL T3 is unable to use all 5 or 6 pax belt loading points simultaneously as intended, and use only 1 or 2 at a time blocking the rest off, defeating the logic of the design. Fixable.

— Sanjiv Kapoor (@TheSanjivKapoor) December 10, 2022

“T3’s new X-Ray machines have slowed it,” he wrote, listing the four ways in which the X-ray machines at the terminal delay passengers.

T3’s new X-Ray machines have slowed it.
1) Multiple entry to X-ray are made liner.
2) Obligation to push everything in tray (even box / bags) takes more time.
3) Manual rechecks are lethal lengthy.
4) Reload of tray
Simply brining previous machines could have immediate impact!

— Vijay Shekhar Sharma (@vijayshekhar) December 10, 2022

Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), the busiest as well as the country's largest airport, has three terminals -- T1, T2 and T3. All international flights and some domestic services operate from T3.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation is discussing with domestic airlines ways to address overall congestion at the Delhi airport, including the possibility of reducing the number of flights operated during peak hours, according to officials.

Senior ministry officials today visited T3 to inspect passenger movements and baggage checkpoints, among other aspects, the officials said.

(With inputs from PTI)