Opening of arrival hall at airport terminal put off

AAI cites COVID-19 concerns

15/03/2020, SUNITHA SEKAR,CHENNAI

The hall has been lying unused since its inauguration in 2013.

The opening of the arrival hall at the international terminal of the Chennai airport has been put off temporarily due to the COVID-19 situation, said sources.

The hall has been lying unused ever since it was inaugurated way back in 2013, as part of phase I modernisation of the Chennai airport. It was never put to use, with the Airports Authority of India (AAI) claiming that it could not be used due to insufficient manpower in both Immigration and Customs. It was later decided that the hall would be used for departure operations, but even this has been getting delayed for several months now.

Recently, AAI officials had decided that operations would finally begin by mid-March.

‘No point now’

AAI officials said that they had to postpone starting operations at the hall due to the existing circumstances created by COVID-19.

“Even now, we are prepared for it, but immigration authorities are not in favour of implementing it now due to concerns regarding COVID-19. But even otherwise, starting operations now doesn’t really help much because the point of operating the hall was to augment capacity of the departure hall at the international terminal, to ease peak-hour congestion. Now, both aircraft movement and passenger traffic have fallen drastically, and those travelling can just go through the existing departure hall itself,” an official said.

In the last two weeks, over 90 flights have been cancelled due to the impact of COVID-19. On Saturday too, several flights to various destinations like Dubai, Colombo, Muscat, Kuala Lumpur and Kuwait were cancelled. Such cancellations are going to continue in the coming days and the number is likely to increase, he added.