New Delhi’s Terminal-2 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport is ready to open up after a gap of six months. The airport will resume operations from October 1.
The airport was shut down after all flights were suspended since March 25 in the wake of the stringent nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
At present, only Terminal -3 at the IGIA was operational for passenger travel.
While domestic passenger flights have now returned to 60 per cent of pre-Covid occupancy capacity, insiders said that traffic is expected to further pick up in the coming weeks.
“The resumption of operations at T-2 will be with 96 air traffic movements (48 departures and 48 arrivals) per day and increase progressively up to 180 by the end of October," Delhi International Airport (DIAL) said in a statement.
"The terminal will resume operations with IndiGo's 2000 series flights and entire operations of GoAir in the initial phase. About 27 counters – 11 for GoAir and 16 for IndiGo – have been created to cater to the passengers of
respective flights."
According to DIAL, the first flight scheduled from T-2 after reopening will be of Srinagar-bound Indigo aircraft that will depart at 6.25 am.
"To start with, all IndiGo flights with series 2000 (6E 2000 – 6E 2999) will operate from T-2," the statement said.
"These will cater to 20 destinations from T-2, including Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bhubaneswar, Bhopal, Bengaluru, Cochin, Guwahati, Indore, Jammu, Lucknow, Chennai, Patna, Srinagar, Trivandrum, and Visakhapatnam among others."
DIAL stated that in the upcoming phase, from October 8, flights to 12 more destinations, including Mumbai, Kolkata, Coimbatore, Dehradun, Goa, Hyderabad, Madurai, Jaipur, and Nagpur, will start functioning from T-2.
Air travel resumed on May 25 but the government allowed airlines to operate only at 33 per cent of the capacity. It was increased to 60 per cent in June. Many state governments including West Bengal also put restrictions on the number of flights plying from their cities.
(with agency inputs).
