Indira Gandhi International Airport: State of Art or Misery

On my return from US, I landed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport at New Delhi developed by GMR.I was pleasantly surprised to see clean lobbies with user friendly services like children’s play area, laptop stations, information centers etc. Indeed GMR group did spend some time and money in designing the airport.
However I felt that the Airport lacked the vision for future in certain areas and also lacked in some of its maintenance and coordination activities.

1. The airport did not have separate toilet earmarked and designed for the handicapped as is the basic norm in all worldwide airports.

2. The laptop stations plug points were non functional and worse the airport authorities were not even aware of it.

3. The conveyor belts did not display the luggage from which flight was moving on them.

4. The drinking water outlets were very few and there were hardly any overhead signboards indicating their location in the airport.

5. As a transit passenger when I moved to domestic terminal in night 12 o clock, I was denied entry into the airport by CISF. They had instructions from their boss(not the Airport manager) for not allowing passengers of a particular flight inside till the airline counter for check in inside the airport was not open .THE CISF could not risk passengers to hang in the airport without their baggage checked in.. On inquiring with the Airport manager I found that he has instructed all Airlines to man their counters for 24 hours. But since the airlines were not following laid down rules he will try to reinforce those orders. Owing to this 100 passengers , for almost 1.30 hours kept standing(little provision to sit} outside the Airport in the cold when we had valid tickets for travel. This is how a customer gets treated when he is even charged a USER DEVELOPMENT FEE!

6. The phone booths can be used with the help of a booth operator. There is no provision of inserting coins and calling up on your own independently of the operator. This is the state at all places where phone booths are there in airport.

7. The airport had no provision for metro/shuttles to reach till the Airport door.(This obviously requires collaboration from various departments) Imagine the plight of sportsmen and others who would land at the airport for common wealth games in 2010 and have to carry their kits to the buses parked in a distant parking spot. The best airports in the world have public transport like shuttles/metro dropping and picking customers from the airport door.

Since the Airport has a feedback mechanism(I used it too)I am hoping things will improve there..atleast those in their control.