Delhi IGI airport’s fourth runway to start operations by early 2023: AAI Official

By the beginning of 2023, IGI Airport's fourth runway will be ready for use. According to Sanjeev Kumar, head of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), remaining tasks including painting runway markers and calibration will be finished by the end of this December. By the beginning of 2023, the fourth runway should be in use, he said. Only IGIA will have four runways in all of India.
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New Delhi: By the beginning of 2023, IGI Airport's fourth runway will be ready for use. According to Sanjeev Kumar, head of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), remaining tasks including painting runway markers and calibration will be finished by the end of this December. By the beginning of 2023, the fourth runway should be in use, he said.
Only IGIA will have four runways in all of India. NATS, a UK-based air traffic management company, recently completed a capacity study for Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL), which revealed that its four runways can handle up to 14 crore passengers annually, more than double the 6.9 crore international-cum-domestic (both arrival and departure) numbers from the last year before the pandemic of 2019.
But in order to get to that number, air traffic management strategies will need to be used, along with numerous other technical solutions, to safely handle more planes by lowering their separation. While several airports are being privatised, the government-owned AAI manages air traffic in Indian airspace and provides air navigation services at all airports.
There aren't enough air traffic controllers to handle the country's growing flight traffic and new airports (ATCOs). “Given the kind of traffic IGIA — India’s busiest airport — handles, we need experienced ATCOs. We are seeing many of them getting transferred to other places from Delhi and that could have its impact on operations here,” said senior ATCOs.
Kumar said there were concrete plans to have more ATCOs and upgrade the air traffic control (ATC) systems across India. “We have drawn up a 10-year plan to increase ATC capacity by replacing old equipment and upgrading them across India. As of now, AAI spends Rs 600-700 crore annually on-air navigation systems. This will be upped to Rs 1,000 crore,” he said.
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