Four bays at Chennai airport to be closed for upgradation
At the Chennai airport, four bays will not be open for boarding flights for about 45 days due to airside upgradation work.
According to officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), they are strengthening taxiway H in the airport so that code E aircraft (wide-body aircraft that can accommodate as much as 300-400 passengers) can be handled in this taxiway.
While this work is under way, four bays will be closed from June 1 in the T1 domestic terminal, where the majority of the domestic departures and arrival flights are handled.
If these bays are closed, aircraft, aerobridges will not be available for some flights. Passengers of those flights may have to take the bus for boarding.
'This is an important and necessary capacity enhancement work that will greatly help in improving efficiency in handling wide-body aircraft. Except for a few, including a portion of taxiway H, most of the taxiways are compatible to handle code E aircraft. The inconvenience will be minor and only for a brief period. We will certainly complete the work within 45 days,' an official said.
Only code C flights (like A320 which can handle nearly 140-200 passengers) will be affected by this work, officials said.
A. Shankar, a frequent flyer, said, 'It is good if they are doing this to upgrade the airport, but for a senior citizen like me, it's definitely going to be difficult. It will be quite tiring to take the bus and then board the aircraft in the absence of an aerobridge. I hope they finish the work within the stipulatedtime frame and not delay it like the other projects.'
But in a bid to decongest the T1 domestic terminal, they have now decided to shift the ATR departure flights of IndiGo (whose capacity is nearly 80-100 passengers) to the T4 domestic terminal while the arrival will continue in the T1 terminal. There are about 30-35 ATR departure and arrival flights of IndiGo at Chennai airport every day. Thus far, only Air India's domestic flights were handled in the T4 terminal.
Frequent airport users feel that there should be clear signage put up to inform the passengers that IndiGo's ATR departures (flight numbers: 7000-7999) have moved to the T4 terminal.
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