Airline crew need golf carts to traverse enormous new Delhi terminal
Delhi International Airport’s Terminal 3 (T3), to which Air India, Jet and Kingfisher will shift their domestic operations on Sunday, is so enormous that flight crew will require golf carts to get around it.
A report in the Times of India says that India’s Aviation Ministry has told airlines to keep three to four golf carts at hand, so that flight crew arriving in distant bays can traverse the sprawling new terminal.
Cabin and cockpit crew are required to keep a log for Customs, listing items they are taking with them on international flights. Mistakes in this declaration are common, the newspaper notes. It quoted an unnamed senior official as saying: “At T3, walking from a distant bay to customs/immigration counters to get a mistake rectified and then returning to the aircraft means an additional 45 minutes. So airlines have been asked to keep golf carts at their disposal.”
So huge is the cavernous new terminal that Jet Airways has instructed its pilots and cabin crew to report for duty two hours before each domestic flight and two-and-a-half hours before each international flight. That’s an hour longer than previously.
Pilots have reportedly been told that they must allow 45 minutes to reach the aircraft from the security gate.
They could do it faster by using go-karts, but these have apparently not been considered.
Written by : Peter Needham
