Delhi airport set to become global gateway by 2027, says DIAL CEO

New Delhi: The Delhi airport will become a global getaway in the next two years, as it is expected to cross the benchmark of handling 24 million international passengers annually, Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) chief executive officer (CEO) Videh Kumar Jaipuriar said on Friday.

The benchmark was identified after a global consultancy recently conducted a detailed study, stating the criteria the airport needed to fulfill to qualify as an international hub.

“The Delhi airport is on the cusp of becoming a global hub as the airport is nearing the target. A hub study that was conducted by Arthur D’Little in collaboration with all the stakeholders in aviation said that for you to become a global gateway, you have to have an international traffic of about 24 million plus. We have currently clocked close to about 22 million and hopefully in the next one year we should be at least surpassing that 24 million,” he said.

“Another benchmark they had was that connecting traffic should be in the region of about 30 percent and we currently have international connecting traffic at about 26 percent, so we are well advanced in that direction.”

“From a long haul point of view, because that is where people normally use the connecting airport, the total traffic should be in the region of 33 percent, which is close to 30 percent in that.”

The DIAL chief said that the airport is working with airlines as well. “It is primarily the responsibility of the airlines to ensure that they have got connectivity to different regions.”

IGI is connected to 70 international destinations. Out of these, nine destinations are in North America and 18 are in Europe.

“The total weekly frequency of hours between North America and Europe, which we consider as long haul, is about 280 frequencies in a week, which if we compare with one of the better known super connectors, not a global gateway in Southeast Asia, the connectivity is 260.”

Jaipuriar said that the airport’s primary focus is not only on increasing connectivity to North America but also to the Asia-Pacific region, whether Australia or New Zealand.

“We have had several meetings with the airports and airlines of these regions and signed one or two MOUs. We have signed an MOU with Auckland Airport to ensure that connectivity with Auckland is established. There is a lot of interest on their side. We are only awaiting availability of the right kind of aircraft to improve our connectivity to the Asia Pacific region,” he said.

The DIAL chief said that the airport is witnessing growing interest from airlines serving strong market destinations, largely due to India’s strategic geographical location.

“Some of the interesting flows is from Singapore to Paris, Dubai to Hong Kong and Sri Lanka to Europe. Besides that, we have also seen it from Phuket to Europe. So some of these interesting flows have started emerging looking at our better connectivity,” he said.

“Our AI (ArtificiaI Intelligence) based system gives us a predictive load on an hourly basis, that helps us improve the manning at different counters…in fact, it has improved our overall efficiency at various touch points by close to 20%. And that has helped us process more passengers in a given time and ensure that the connectivity of the airlines is seamless.”

We work very closely with all our stakeholders because the key stakeholders in creating a hub are airlines and government authorities.

With airlines—whether in terms of making sure that their slots are adjusted in a manner that there is a good slot bank, which is convenient for the passengers to connect—the airport continuously keeps on working and keeps on rejigging their slots so that connectivity and the connecting time get reduced, the CEO concluded.