India is developing a national strategy to elevate its airports into significant global hubs, ensuring seamless access to the South Asian area. The plan seeks to tackle issues related to security and immigration, allocate international flight privileges, and establish essential infrastructure. The objective is to position airports like Delhi as transit hubs, vying with well-known counterparts such as Dubai and Singapore’s Changi Airport.
India is currently in the process of formulating a national policy with the aim of transforming its airports into major international hubs offering seamless single-point international connections within the South Asian region. To achieve this objective, the policy, awaiting approval from the cabinet, will concentrate on simplifying security and immigration procedures at airports, allotting international flight rights, and constructing crucial infrastructure.
The ultimate goal is to empower airports like Delhi to evolve into transit hubs that can rival prominent international airports such as Dubai and Singapore’s Changi Airport, as reported by ET. Transit hubs essentially act as central points for consolidating passenger demand from a wide geographic area and offering multiple direct flights to major cities around the world. Presently, a significant portion of Indian travelers headed for Europe and North America rely on foreign airlines and foreign hubs like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha. A government official was quoted as saying, “This is a significant revenue leakage for airlines and airports, and the Indian aviation ecosystem is unable to capitalize on the growth in long-haul international traffic.”
With the expansion of international traffic by Air India and IndiGo, the government is motivated to establish this comprehensive policy, as stated by the official. Furthermore, a unified policy will enhance coordination among various ministries and foster the development of consistent regulations. Security regulations and immigration currently fall under the purview of the Ministry of Home Affairs, while international flight rights are overseen by the Ministry of External Affairs. Infrastructure development will be handled by the National Infrastructure Pipeline. Hence, the necessity of a unified framework is paramount.
Crucial elements of an effective hub airport include a strategic location, a strong presence of airlines, and efficient connections between international and domestic flights. Given the robust reputation of airlines like IndiGo and Air India, the policy will address areas requiring enhancement.
The key areas of focus within the policy encompass the revision of security regulations to expedite flight connections, reducing waiting times at immigration, and improving connectivity within airport terminals. Notable challenges related to seamless airport connectivity involve the requirement for duplicate security checks during the transition between domestic and international zones, the mandate for immigration procedures solely at the departure city, and addressing staff shortages at immigration counters.
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Delhi Airport is currently situated across three terminals, and a plan is underway to link them via a train system, eliminating the need for passengers to exit the airport and rely on buses for transfers. The goal is to establish a transportation model that allows passengers to transfer within the secure airport area, following the practice of hub airports with over 100 million passengers. The government is actively developing the financial framework for this significant investment.
Videh Kumar Jaipuriar, the CEO of Delhi Airport, emphasized the airport’s strategic location to become a prominent regional transit hub. Kumar explained that the Delhi airport is strategically positioned for routes connecting North America and Europe to South East Asia or East Africa to North East Asia. However, other airports have attracted this traffic due to their competitiveness.
Creating a hub necessitates cooperation among airlines, airports, and government policies to ensure that the airport attains its rightful status and that airlines benefit financially by offering direct flights. At the Delhi airport, initiatives have been initiated to streamline airport slots to facilitate coordination between IndiGo and Air India’s domestic and international networks. This coordination will enable passengers to make swift connections.
We are working closely with both airlines to establish slot banks for European and North American flights, ensuring an adequate number of domestic flights within two hours before the departure of their Europe and North America flights, Jaipuriar elaborated.
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