The country's largest domestic airline IndiGo has issued an advisory for its passengers departing from Delhi Airport amid reports of congestion and chaos at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in the national capital.
In an advisory posted on micro blogging site Twitter, IndiGo has requested its passengers departing from Delhi to reach airport at least 3.5 hours prior to domestic departure and carry only one piece of hand baggage weighing 7 kilograms for a smooth security check. Generally it is advisable for customers taking domestic flights to reach 2 hours before the departure.
The airline has also advised its passenger to use gate number 5 and 6 at Delhi Airport, Terminal 3 as they are nearest to the IndiGo check-in counters.
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Amid rising passenger complaints about long queues and waiting hours at the country's largest airport in recent days, the civil aviation ministry and the stakeholders took various measures to deal with the situation.
The officials said an action plan has been drawn up after the visit of the minister to T3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) on Monday morning.
As part of the action plan, number of flights during 5 am to 9 am will be reduced and it will also be explored to move some flights to T1 and T2 or to non-peak hours at T3, they said.
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The peak hours are from 5 am to 9 am and 4 pm to 8 pm.
IGIA has three terminals -- T1, T2 and T3. All international flights and some domestic services operate from T3. On an average, it handles around 1.90 lakh passengers and about 1,200 flights daily.
At T3 domestic, additional ATRS (Automatic Tray Retrieval System) machines for baggage check will be deployed to help reduce the congestion, the officials said.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, there were 13 ATRS machines installed on the ground -- 11 for passengers + 2 for crew and specially-abled.
This number has been increased to 16 (10 ATRS + 6 conventional X-ray machines) in the last few days. This will be increased further to 17 soon, and subsequently to 20, the officials said.
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