Chaos at Delhi Intl Airport. Min. 5 hrs reporting time req. to make the flight

atala

New Delhi: Angry Govt raps DIAL for mess at airport

The government has thrown its weight behind the harassed passenger at Delhi’s international airport. Upset with the slow pace of work and a collapse of passenger facilities, the civil aviation ministry has summoned all stakeholders for a meeting on March 10 to work out a roadmap for hastening the airport modernisation exercise.

The ministry’s intervention came after the Hindustan Times highlighted the wretched situation at the airport, where endless queues at the entrance, check-in and immigration counters have been traumatising passengers, and leading to both delayed take-offs and missed flights.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/

Sorry the link has a problem. Therefore I give only the main link to the paper. If you know how to get to yesterday's edition, you will find more pertinent info.

shashank.aggarwal

Govt. throws its weight and it still needs more than 4 days to organize a meeting...

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SitaParityaga

Atala, thanks for the news! Even if it takes days to happen, at least its happening. Having dealt with the insanity of IGI, and knowing I'll be through there this fall, gives me some hope of a better time coming into or leaving India through Delhi.

atala

I am at a primitive PC and cannot make decent postings. Which is why i need to do several posts.

The Hindustan Times of Delhi reported in the past few days a catastrphic situation at Delhi Intl Airport. Most flights get 2 hrs delayed, waiting for passengers to make it. They thereby lose their reserved slots at European and other automated Airports for landing. Passengers who wrote to the paper said that you need one hour to just get into the Airport, and then have to wait in a queue at the baggage-screening for 2 hours, then again at check-in and another 2 hours at Security check and Immigration. So a minimum of 5 hours is needed to just get thru the checks.

There is also possibility to get hurt by trolleys because upset people may try to push thru.

I have to catch a flight early tomorrow morning 4 a.m. I intend to be 6 and a half hours early, at 10 p.m., at the airport, to make my flight for sure.

This situation is said to prevail until April, when construction work is supposed to be finished.

I will report about my experiences after arrival in Switzerland.

If you ask me who or what is to blame for such a situation: It is that government jobs are handed out on bribe, and not on qualification. These are clearly idiots at the Delhi Airport Authority who do not know what they are doing, and just want to sit their assigned jobs out until their retirement. At different Airports they were able to manage it differently, to renew an Airport without creating havoc. But Delhi is Delhi. So be it.

As always, India is the perfect place to learn and exercise patience, and the ability to wobble one's head after each formal step is finally completed.

You guys who stay on in India, have fun ... and patience, too.

Aishah

Atala - I couldn't open link because of some 'debug' configuration and I haven't time to do all this, but does this mean from now on passengers must report 5 hours before take off for check in? Thanks for posting.

I see I crossposted with you, so my question has been answered, thanks. Let us know how it is after you've done the check-in , flight etc. and have time.

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SitaParityaga

Yes, Atala, please post again after you've returned to let us all know about your experience!

Deeonna

Hi. I am coming to India for the very first time in April!

Should we expect the same time delays at Delhi International on arrival for processing, getting baggage, finding our driver & such?

As we land Saturday 2am (from NZ)…then depart on the same day from domestic at 10.40am for Varanassi….is it worth getting to an airport hotel (and if so, which?). Would be very keen to do so, even for 5 hours or so. And if there are options within the airports, let me know. Thank you.

atala

Supposedly the National Terminal is not affected by this.

One problem that a passenger reported is that due to the scaffolding you cannot see whether you are standing in the right queue, for instance at the entrance.

Of course, nobody can tell how long this requirement of minimum 5 hrs is going to be in place. It is only an inofficial advice. My Airline (Emirates) today still said it to be there 3 hrs before departure. But their call-center is not in Delhi, so they did not know about the situation, and were grateful to get informed. If you have a flight soon, call your airline to check whether you will get another flight, if you do not make yours or your connecting flight, if any. And tell their call center about the situation at the airport, so that they can advise future unsuspecting callers about the need to report more than 3 hours before departure.

brownboy66

As atala said - you should be fine. The problem is more international departures from Delhi as opposed to domestic (also depends I guess on which domestic airline you're flying out with as they have different areas at the airport).

As for staying at a hotel - with the time you mention, looks like your getting in on the 2.40am flight from Singapore? It will take maybe 1-2 hours to get through immigration, get your bag, etc - which means out of the airport by 4.30/ 5am? The out again at 10.40? Oh well, even a few hours sleep is worth it. Check out the hotel reviews http://www.indiamike.com/reviews/

oh and by the way - kia ora, and welcome to IM

cicliced

I travelled from Delhi Intl airport about 10 days ago and had no problems. Flight was at 21.00, we arrived at 18.00 and was sitting in departures within 45mins , and the flight departed on time. Saw a lot of work going on around the airport but not the queues mentioned here, so it can't be a constant problem, maybe just at certain times of the day/week.

karuna

I flew out February 9th with no problems at all. Queue at immigration was fewer than 10 people, queue at security maybe thirty, so they opened a new lane.

Heathrow was the usual nightmare it always is, in contrast.

MrsC_772

When I flew home last Thursday, things were nowhere near that bad. My flight was due to leave at 13.45 and I got to the airport about 3 hours before, which left me plenty of time for sitting in lounges drinking fresh lime soda.

The greatest potential for chaos and confusion was baggage screening before check in. It's not clear which queue you should join. At the nearest queue there was what looked like a camera crew with large numbers of aluminium boxes to be scanned, so I joined another, only to be told by an American woman whose suitcase was in the machine that nothing had moved for some time. More worrying, there was a guy in bomb-disposal armour examining a cardboard box about 5 metres from where we were standing! I had horrible visions of the whole airport being evacuated, but it was clearly a false alarm, and the line started moving about 5 minutes after I got there.

Otherwise, the queues for check in, immigration and security weren't too bad. The queue for immigration at Heathrow on landing was worse than at Delhi before taking off.

I think my flight left about 30 minutes late, but made up time so we got to Heathrow pretty much on schedule.

Aishah

The last few posts sound a bit more encouraging - my flight in a month leaves at 8.45 a.m. and if I have to be at the airport 5 hours prior, I might as well not go to bed for the night.. Not looking forward to this.

brownboy66

in your shoes - I would have started running the moment I spied the guy in armour!

atala

The situation was mixed for me in terms of waiting time required in the different queues. There is first the Airport entering queue, then the baggage-screening queue, then the check-in queue, then the Immigration queue, then the security check queue, after which one proceeds to the gates.

I got into my taxi at 9 p.m. at Paharganj and arrived at the Airport at 10 p.m. This includes the traffic jam onto the ramp leading to the departure gate of the terminal. This is particularly critical for those who decide to chose a reporting time closer to 3 hours before departure, because you can lose a lot of time just getting onto the departure ramp. (It took me about 15-20 minutes spent in the traffic jam.) I saw people getting out of the car and walking, probably people who thought they would miss their flight.

I was in 5 minutes in the Airport, and after another 10 minutes thru the baggage-screening. Since I chose to have 6 hours before my flight, I had to wait until its check-in counters opened. I noticed that the immigration queue was enormously large and very slowly moving. I would say that queue took at least 2 hours between 9-12 p.m.

However, the queues depend on whether there is a rush of flights leaving the same time or not. Between 11 and 12 p.m. the baggage screening queue looked like it took an hour for a person to get thru. I do not know what it might have looked like outside, to get into the airport, since I was not allowed to go look outside again.

The check-in queues are dominated by the problem of not having enough space for sufficient check-in counters, and limited space for the forming of queues. You can expect to wait there between one and two hours. When my time came to see whether my counters were open I jumped the queue inadvertently because I had not noticed that there was one. There was just a crowd of people apparently queueing for another airline.

When my check-in was accomplished at around 2.20 a.m., the immigration queue was rather small compared to two hours before. It took me about 45 minutes to get thru. (I had a small chat with the immigration officer who looked totally drained of energy. He told me he was working non-stop for the past 8 hours. I offered him a quick shoulder-neck massage which would have helped him to refresh. Well, he could not accept the offer, of course, but he considered for a moment, and that woke him up too.) Here an advice to the “angry government”: Give more importance to the situation your employees have to endure, give them a break once in a while. Aren’t there labour laws covering that?

To resume: The final security check queue looked manageable. That took me about 20 minutes, but only because I chose to stand in line in the shortest one, which is the one leading to booth A, the outermost left one. Other people must have been too tired to even notice that the queues had dramatically differing lengths. If someone chose the last booth, they would have spent the double or triple time waiting in line compared to the first one.

A curious thing was that the area around the security check looked like a garbage-dump, empty bottles thrown away, dirt all around, a large hole opening up to the outside, which would have looked like a menacing security risk itself. In fact, later I fed a street kitty looking for food at the gate area. It probably got in thru one of those openings.

My Emirates flight left 20 minutes after its scheduled time. This must be due to Emirate’s strict no-late-departure policy. Missing passengers of all departing airlines are paged before the gates close, so there is a possibility of making a flight even if coming late. All the other Airlines, including Swiss, American and BA took off at least 2 hours late, Air India to Seoul even 3 hours late.

I think the Emirates flight could leave near to its scheduled time only due to its smartly chosen timing. It is a time when not many other flights are scheduled. This must be why people who reported at the regular 3 hours before departure had a chance to make it.

My advice therefore: You have to consider the whole departure situation, whether it is a rush-hour or not, if you want to take the risk to report at the minimum 3 hours at the airport. To find out about the policy that your airline follows regarding departing late or not you should monitor the flight-status of your prospective flight a few days before you leave, on their website. It is up to you, of course, whether you will include the delay time an airline generates into your estimate about safest time you need to arrive at the Airport. As a general rule I would say reporting time should be between 4-5 hours before scheduled departure, as long as this situation prevails, esp if you do not know whether your departure time is a rush-hour or not.

I took an interesting book with me, so time past really fast. And I slept one hour while waiting on a chair.

One thing that I’d like to add is that I found each and every person working at the airport to be extremely friendly and helpful at every step in the process. It looked like they made a special endeavour to be friendly and present with helpful attitudes.

Passengers were also tolerant and I did not notice anyone freaking out. I heard a remark or two that someone said that they had never spent this much time waiting at an airport in all their life.

Good luck to everyone, and have a nice flight when your turn comes up.